Cody
Williams
Do Anything, Except Be Afraid
Fox newscasters were given their talking points for broadcast discussions on the crisis in New Orleans. They were told to focus on the looting, lawlessness and the ‘rumored’ “rape of children” taking place in the streets of the crippled city.
New Orleans evacuees gather to pray in midst of
disaster
Fox chose not to inform the world of the Charity Hospital patients and others stranded and needing transport to the makeshift medical center growing at the NO International Airport. Fox was more concerned about young “thugs” getting away with two pair of Nike basketball shoes than thousands of people trapped by flood waters in attics and on rooftops begging for someone to help them, to rescue them.
Fox News repeatedly showed footage of one young black teenager skipping through ankle high water trying unsuccessfully to hold up the sagging oversized jeans falling off his ass and hold onto the ill-gotten booty in his arms. He couldn’t do both. Something had to give. Presumably he dropped the loot and pulled his pants up, considering the home he had planned to take the stolen electronics back to was, like 80% of New Orleans, under roof high water.
This young looter, and Fox, in a time of national crisis and out of habit, chose to focus their energies and attention on something that didn’t really matter much, instead of using their considerable resources where they were needed: in the aid and comfort of people during a time of desperate need. While Fox talked of looters MSNBC was showing footage of an elderly black man, using two Igloo lemonade coolers for floatation, flailing desperately in house deep water trying best he could to reach a dry landing. It looked like if he survived his swim to safety he would not survive the heart attack that would follow. While looters sought the senseless, Fox focused on the sensational. While looters chose to exploit opportunity, Fox chose to exploit our fears, hatred and prejudices.
As I drove through New England Friday I was struck by how beautiful the day’s weather was, almost as perfect as it was in New York City on Tuesday September, 11 2001. In the spot where I stood on the planet life was good. But for residents of the Gulf Coast standing on this same rock we call Earth, existence was barely bearable.
Here in America we’ve gotten used to emergency responders showing up within minutes of our plea for help. Hundreds of brave New York City fire fighters lost their lives at the World Trade Center because we rush to help people first and judge them later. We ask questions after we save a life: “Were you smoking in bed when the fire started?” “Did you take your heart medicine before the heart attack? “ Were you standing too close to the ledge before falling into the canyon?”
For people to have to stand three and four days on a roof top, in 90 degree weather, waving flags and signs calling for help is not just un-American it is almost inhumane in a society that has the resources to drive a military convoy under enemy fire from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad in less than nine days.
Some say emergency response was delayed because of the reports of gun fire, lawlessness and “rape” in the devastated area. Were government, military and emergency officials afraid to go in and rescue those who needed them the most? Could sensationalist press have contributed to the delay in much needed assistance?
Had we gotten early reports of the hundreds of individuals across the country opening up their homes to displaced Gulf Coast residents would that have encouraged more of us to do so, earlier?
In fairness one Fox News reporter, Geraldo Rivera, stood among thousands of people living for days in the squalor and filth of the refugee camp that was once the New Orleans Convention Center and held up a 10-month-old baby for the watching world to see. Rivera then pleaded on air with tears in his eyes for “anyone, everyone” who could hear him to do what ever we could to help get those people out of that situation. Then he turned to them in a plaintiff wail, “I wish each of you would get up and start walking out of this place, out of this filth. Walk, walk out onto the highway, walk across that bridge and out of here,” he pleaded. Few within his hearing moved. Many were too infirmed, too old, too stunned, too lost to do so.
Are we also too stunned by the week’s events, images and sensationalism to help them?
Call your church, social organization or professional association and ask what you can do to help it help these Americans in need. If that organization is not doing anything, insist that it allows you to organize an effort using its resources. We should only fear what would happen if we did nothing.
We can all be made better from this experience if we are just better than Fox News, looters and other opportunists.
© 2005 By Cody Williams www.codywilliams.com
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