was anyone watching the telethon for new orleans on nbc? I flipped on nbc at the right moment cause when i turned Kanye spoke out. I got more respect for him now
Gender: Male Location: Welfare Kingdom of California
I think it got edited here in the West Coast. But I did get to see Mike Myers scratch his left eye with the middle finger. I'm just curious...is Kanye West the official spoke person for all black people? I didn't see Aaron Neville, Eriq Salle, and the controversial comedian Chris Rock making comments like Kanye did.
In the hip-hop world he probably went more out on a limb when he voiced his support of gay people. Not that that should be a very big deal either, but in general the pop cultural hip-hop world has not been very accepting.
Anyway, even Bush now admits that this disaster in the Southern U.S. was mishandled and I think that it is commonly admitted that race and social class played a factor in this. I mean, even network t.v. acknowledges this now, it is quite blatant.
Regarding the tragic loss of property and lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina , my heart goes out to those people. But, how can one try to help if the ones who claim to want help are shooting at those who are providing it and rioting and looting and acting uncivilized. True, in situations so grave as the one that occurred in the New Orleans area, people act irrationally, but what is the reason to shoot at an Army helicopter that is providing much needed assistance? That makes no sense what so ever ! My uncle, Remo, and my father, Thomas, along with my aunt Gina and grandfather and grandmother, and my mother had to survive nearly nine months of fierce fighting in the little town of Ortona during the World War Two. For nine months, they and thirty eight others were hiding in the cellar of my grandfather's restaurant from the Germans because my grandfather was a veteran of the First World War with dual American/Italian citizenship and fought on the American side and the Germans and Indians would grab young girls for their pleasure.
These people were true refugees because all their belongings were lost and what little belongings they had were carried on their backs.
Christmas Day, 1942, they only had a thin slice of potato cooked in wine { the restaurant had a wine cellar(referred in the above paragraph) so my grandfather and my aunt and other girls could hide in the barrels form the Gestapo and the Germans}. These people did not riot or "raise cain" or shoot at people trying to help them. Many friends and family were lost from both "friendly" and enemy fire. When both my uncle and my father came to America in the middle It the 1950's, all they had in their pocket was a fork from my grandfather's restaurant and the clothes they had on their backs. They did not scream and holler to the president and the government to hurry and bring support and that they are slow to respond.
I respect the efforts that entertainers such as Faith Hill, Kanye West, Nicklaus Cage, et cetera, are doing to help and the many large corporations, but their direction is misguided and they are misinformed. They only see a thumbnail sketch of what really is happening. They get bits and pieces of information from skewed sources that tend to be biased and, many times, not too thorough.
One more thing I have to say, DO NOT , and I REPEAT, DO NOT DONATE TO ANY CHARITY OR PEOPLE CLAIMING TO HELP WITH DISASTER RRELIEF FOR VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA AND, ABOVE ALL, DO NOT DONATE TO THE RED CROSS. GIVE TO BETTER OFRGANZATIONS SUCH AS AMERICARES OR THE SALVATION ARMY.
RUSHmusicfan, I really apprecate what you are saying. You make some good points.
One thing I would like to note though, my sister was stuck there until Wednessay because there was no way for tourists to leave the city. She was one of the first 30 or so people to arrive at the Convention Center. She said that the police and especially the national guard there were rude, unhelpful, and inept. They wouldn't let people into the building but they wouldn't tell people where to go. They said they would take some people to the Superdome (which at that time was already unsanitary and flooding), but really just took them a few blocks away and dropped them off. They were laughing and joking among themselves and were oblivious to the fact that the people outside the center had no place to go and no proper direction.
I think that this is symptomatic of the kind of issues that are being raised behind the slow response to this emergency. It simply was not taken seriously enough and an organized relief effort was very tardy. It is just difficult to imagine that being the case if it was Beverly Hills.
There is no excuse for the violence going on down there now. My sister said she saw looting, but also saw people banding together, singing, offering moral support, etc. That side isn't being reported because of the violent miscreants. Look at the history of the South in the United States though. It is not the case that the government has always been benign to those people. There is a history of violence and discrimination. There is poverty and lack of education. There is a legacy where people are unempowered and devalue themselves. All of these things contribute to the powder keg that exploded.
But we also want to be more careful than Kanye when we generalize people. Japanese tourists lost their lives, there are poor white people and there are upper and middle class black people, there are certainly plenty of othe people there too. In the general sense we can look at racism as affecting the situation but we can also look at racism in how it is being portrayed -- so many images of poor black people with headlines like "Anarchy and Rape" in New Orleans. That is also not the reality.
Unless we were there we all have only a "thumbnail sketch" of what was going on. Based on what my sister said, criticism is warranted. The other side of it is that there really shouldn't be this kind of violence in such a situation, and that is a shame. We have to take a long look at the United States as a country to ask why this is happening, and we shouldn't think of it as something "they" did. Citizens here should see it as symptomatic of a cultural violence that is more pervasive. Finally, class, racial, and other dynamics are complicated in the United States in general and this disaster highlights many sensitive issues of representation, disenfranchisement, and the plight of the poor in the United States.
Cause they get what they want to hear then come him off. All media outlets are like that. SpellJammer just stopped watching all news exsept for FOX News. It seems to be the only non-liberal bias bullshit network left on television..
SpellJammer has no respect for someone who takes a stab at George Bush. It's cheap and has been done to death.. Why not he speak his mind, give some thoughts on what he feels could've prevented this from happening, and maybe throw some ideas to make it better. Instead of whining about our goverment. But no, that would actually require a fricking brain. It's people like him who demean the black, Hispanic, and other multiracial communities.. Because of guys like him who expect the goverments to all hold thier hand like thier his mommy they believe black people are just lazy bastards collecting food stamps and smoking a crack pipe. It's people like him and his stupidity that keep the white devil alive, not the white devil in himself..
__________________ Smile, tommorow is going to be worse..
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Sep 3rd, 2005 02:14 AM
