America's Tsunami?
I have taken in the news through all my senses (as usual) over the past few days. Katrina unbelievably continues to shock and amaze me. Tragically, New Orleans continues to flood, the death count in the coastal area is rising, and the damage estimates exceed global GDPs. Catastrophe has come, and we are now hearing the stories of tragedy. My heart goes out to all of the people whose lives have been effected by Katrina.
Sunday night at 11:00 a professor at a Louisiana University predicted that Katrina may be the American Tsunami. After landfall, we thought we had dodged the bullet, but as the hours passed the damage assessments came in. Then more and more talking heads mentioned the words America’s Tsunami.
Are you serious? 226,000+ people died in the 2004 Tsunami ranking it as one of the worst tragedies in history, and someone can shallowly compare Katrina to the Tsunami? Katrina has killed a number of people. This is a tragedy of its own right, but surely Katrina can’t compare this loss of life to the massive wipeout of the Tsunami.
WTF?
Sunday night at 11:00 a professor at a Louisiana University predicted that Katrina may be the American Tsunami. After landfall, we thought we had dodged the bullet, but as the hours passed the damage assessments came in. Then more and more talking heads mentioned the words America’s Tsunami.
Are you serious? 226,000+ people died in the 2004 Tsunami ranking it as one of the worst tragedies in history, and someone can shallowly compare Katrina to the Tsunami? Katrina has killed a number of people. This is a tragedy of its own right, but surely Katrina can’t compare this loss of life to the massive wipeout of the Tsunami.
WTF?
posted by floyd at 9:04 PM
6 Comments:
I couldn't agree more. Further evidence of how utterly self-centered and self-important we are as a culture.
I think this also shows how our media tends to brand events. Watching the coverage the other night, I noticed them using cutesy slogans to talk about the areas hit. For example, when the segment went to Biloxi, MS, a graphic appeared onscreen reading, "Biloxi Blues."
While the media is working hard to cover the event and they certainly do help generate fundraising dollars, they trivialize human life and tragedy by trying to compare events (as though it is an equal sum game) or by trying to brand our news coverage.
I heard a news cast that told of one city official in Mississippi who compared the aftermath of Katrina with the devastation of Hiroshima! Although Katrina has brought certain devastation (so much so I wonder how the affected areas can recover),these types of comments are apalling. Moreover, they do not recognize, as Doug mentioned, Katrina as an individual event that effects particular people in a specific place and time.
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I was looking for blogs about tai chi and came across yours. I have whats referred to as a hard style Karate School and this is something we've been contemplating adding to it. Great blog you have and I've enjoyed reading the posts on it.
We have a website that was created during the Tsunami please let us know if any people there is found and we will delete themAfter the Tsunami
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