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Busting out the tinfoil hat
Posted by Amanda Marcotte at 11:19 PM
I have an eerie feeling that the media is already spinning the horrific loss of life to Katrina into a story that is focused primarily on victim-blaming in order to distract from the massive failure to evacuate the city properly that is caused directly by inhumane BushCo policies. For a defense of politicizing events, read Shakes' Sis ( <http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2005/08/politicizing-katrina.html> ).
Suffice it to say, I'm always puzzled by people who want to somehow depoliticize things because they are important--politics are those things that are most important. Granted, the politics should be pertinent to the discussion at hand and not just tacking your pet project onto the latest story, like making a hurricane about abortion. So I'll try to stick with that angle. One way or another, the discussion is going to come around to whether or not the absence of the National Guard in Louisiana and just general unwillingness to provide for what should seem inevitable--that New Orleans is in a prime position to get destroyed by a hurricane. And that's not really a path the media wants to go down, as it's all wonky and not kiss-assy enough for the modern major media.
So how to distract? Blame the victims.
Steve Gilliard, who's got a hella ear for racist dog whistles, lays it on the line ( <http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/08/n-words-steal-whites-find.html> )--racist coverage like this is laying the groundwork for excusing away the fact that the dead are almost surely going to be disproportionately black because the poor are disproportionately black and because the poor are going to be the people who couldn't escape the city as easily. Atrios posted on the two ( <http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_08_28_atrios_archive.html#112545475089735235> ) nearly identical pictures of people taking things they need from flooded stores where the white people were described as "finding" and the black man as "looting". Directly before that, he rightly complained ( <http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_08_28_atrios_archive.html#112545372093464075> ) about the media whining about looters.
Taken altogether, this is what I fear will happen: The victims of the flood will be portrayed via racist stereotypes as criminals and idiots. This will predispose the audience to disliking them. Then, after everything settles down, a few right wingers will start implying that the dead brought their own fate on themselves by being too stupid and/or criminal to evacuate. This focus will distract the pundits from discussing the real issue at hand, which is why the fuck we didn't have the resources on hand to evacuate a city that has Hurricane Target written all over it.
Before you know it, it'll be a wingnut bonaza of people both gleefully indulging in the most racist tendencies while simultaneously claiming that the only reason one might end up dead in a hurricane is because one doesn't have "personal responsibility". But my guess is that the people who are dead mostly didn't have transportation out of the city. Watch the media bury the truth of what happened so fast it'll make your head spin.
source, Pandagon --
<http://www.pandagon.net/archives/2005/08/busting_out_the.html>