Louisiana appears to have suffered a serious disruption on the space-time continuum. http://t.co/aYFbiIA734 A worm hole or some such shit.
— billmon (@billmon1) August 21, 2013
From Jesse Walker’s “United States of Paranoia” excerpt, in Salon:
… The sociologists who study disasters are wary about using the word panic. In real-world disasters, genuine panic is rare and spontaneous social cooperation is the norm. But in 2008, the Rutgers sociologists Lee Clarke and Caron Chess suggested that events like Katrina can spark something they called an elite panic. When the hurricane hit New Orleans, there were rumors that dozens of dead bodies were stacked in the convention center where refugees had taken shelter, that men were firing weapons at the helicopters coming to rescue them, that roving bands of rapists were assaulting people willy-nilly, that survivors of the storm had turned to cannibalism. “Misinformed about conditions on the ground and overly fearful of the loss of property,” Clarke and Chess wrote, “officials turned resources away from rescue in New Orleans. Elites responding after Katrina were disconnected from non-elites and obviously fearful of them. Further, their actions and inactions created greater danger for others.”
Panic may or may not be the appropriate word here. But paranoia is a term that fits. The effects of the elites’ fears were far greater than the effects of, say, the grassroots rumors that the authorities had deliberately blown up New Orleans’ levees to drive out black residents, even if the latter idea was more likely to be invoked in discussions of public paranoia during the disaster.
The first decade of the twenty-first century saw three particularly notable eruptions of elite paranoia. The first came with the reactions to the 9/11 attacks. The second was the response to Katrina, when powerful people’s fears both fed and were reinforced by the centralization and militarization of disaster relief. And the third began when Barack Obama became president, as commentators treated a group of unconnected crimes as a grand, malevolent movement. As is often the case with paranoid perspectives, this connect-the-dots fantasy said more about the tellers’ anxieties than it did about any order actually emerging in the world.
Belafon
I believe the term is white, not elite.
MattW
I get the feeling “elites” is a euphemism for another word, maybe about the same length, ending with the same four letters.
Emma
And it will get worse as the demographics continue to shift (political paranoia) and the world becomes less and less comprehensible to them (existential paranoia). Of course, that begs the question of how much of it is driven and/or reinforced by the media with their never ending quest for more sensationalism.
Belafon
@Emma: I was about to take issue with your use of “begs the question” but then again, the answer to the problems with the media is the media. They are a logical fallacy in and of themselves.
Keith P.
What’s really bad is that some pundit is going to try to actually explain how Obama really is more to blame for Katrina. It will require some creative gymnastics, but it will happen, mark my words. My money is on Limbaugh.
schrodinger's cat
Does anyone get the new Al-Jazeera channel?
mai naem
I was going to post this in yesterday’s french songs thread. It’s a Celine Dion song(!!!) pour que tu m’aimes. I am not normally a Celine Dion fan but her songs in french sound way better than english even if you have no idea what she’s saying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zy-JEP7zOs
Anyhow, I used to be one of those people who thought Celine Dion was another typical female ballad singer but she got some new found respect from me during Katrina when she went on Larry King and was obviously very moved by the tragedy. If you haven’t see this it’s worth watching the five minutes or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXD4BGvPngM
Southern Beale
Yes, I’m a terrible person for laughing at this:
What’s funnier: Creation Museum staffer struck by lightning while on the job or the fact that they had to install a zip line to “reach a wider audience”?
sm*t cl*de
officials turned resources away from rescue in New Orleans
You say ‘paranoia’, I say ‘opportunism’.
aimai
@Keith P.: My guess is that Limbaugh and talk radio in general, as well as fox news, are already responsible for the “blame the democrats” meme–after all there are presumably tons of places where what happened “during Katrina” bleeds over into what happened in the prolonged failure of a clean up. And government’s government to these guys. I noticed quite a while ago that “FEMA is a mess” seemed, to Republicans to mean “government is always incompetent” while to Democrats FEMA is something you might understand as rather time specific. We remember that there were good leaders of FEMA and bad, and that Bush’s particular sin was in installing Brownie as the head. Before and after that FEMA did its job.
Southern Beale
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, I do. I started watching it as soon as they went live. I haven’t seen any reports about the 2016 U.S. presidential election, on the plus side. On the down side, one anchor did say, “we’ll have to leave it there.” And I’ve had an issue with Tony Harris for about six years now.
But all in all, it’s nice to see news, not politics, and it’s really refreshing to see more than 20 seconds devoted to a story.
I hope they can afford to spring for HD soon, too.
boatboy_srq
@Keith P.: Going to? After they’ve already blamed him for everything from Shrub-era domestic security measures (FEMA camps) to Shrub-era energy policy (light bulbs and ceiling fans)? I’m surprised the Teahadist punditry isn’t blaming him for Dred Scott, the Panic of 1837 and the War of 1812.
BD of MN
@Southern Beale: That’s almost as funny as when touchdown Jesus burned to the ground after a lightning strike…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Keith P.:
Oh that is child’s play for these people – remember these are the ones who convinced themselves the Emancipation Proclamation was stolen from Jefferson Davis by Lincoln. The appalling part it’s how it will be accepted as part of the Both Sides do it narrative.
schrodinger's cat
@Southern Beale: Who is Tony Harris? Is he on Al-Jazeera. I haven’t watched CNN for almost a decade now.
MattF
I think it’s more about stupid than psychopathic (or about disturbances in the space-time continuum). And racist. ‘Dumb but ugly’, as they say.
dmsilev
Barack Obama is, of course, a Time Lord.
And he killed Jesus.
Trollhattan
Heck of a job, Brownie.
Suffern ACE
Ah, so that explains Camille Paglia.
scott (the other one)
@mai naem:
I’m not a fan either—I didn’t even know who Ana Gasteyer was parodying on SNL the first few times, way back when—but the book Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson in the 33 1/3 series is fantastic. No kidding.
scav
hole in the head or hole in the space-time continuum? Maybe a
black hole in the head that causes the normal laws of logic to bend and attracts all loose theories in the surrounding area irresistibly? Wingularity physics. . .
Emma
@Suffern ACE: NOTHING explains Camille Paglia. Except maybe Molly Ivins.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Also, since Obama apparently has time-travel and weather-control capabilities, his failure to prevent the flood in Noah’s time was very unfair to the dinosaurs.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Emma: Not so much “explain” as give some well-deserved mockery.
I miss Molly.She’d have a word or three about Texas these days.
gene108
@aimai:
The only good FEMA leaders were under Democratic Presidents. Reagan and Bush, Sr. treated it as a place to stick political cronies, which is one reason Bush, Sr.’s response to Andrew could’ve been better.
Clinton wanted to prove “government is not the problem” and put in the first competent, qualified and effective director in at FEMA.
The Moar You Know
@Trollhattan: so much win.
ruviana
@Southern Beale: I did the same thing, even upped my satellite package to get it. I’m not a fan of Tony either (and I’m waiting to see if Ali Velshi will be able to back away from neoliberal economic cheerleading) but I’m loving it! Longform reporting, a LOT more international news, so far (24 hours or so) I’m impressed.
ranchandsyrup
@Trollhattan: yeah what you did there. I sees it.
kindness
I blame the blah thingy. It’s a twofer. Not only is he a Democrat but he’s blah.
ThresherK
Looking for a new cordless phone to tie to my old-timey landline. What has happened to the human head in the last ten years that the obelisk-shaped handset is so prevalent now? It really doesn’t fit anyone in my family.
(See this at random.)
RaflW
Conservatism can never fail. Hence barack Obama is to blame for Katrina.
Heck, he probably secretly went to Africa and killed an urgently needed butterfly, thereby causing the hurricane to form.
Southern Beale
@schrodinger’s cat:
Tony Harris is a former CNN anchor, who now anchors AJAM’s news ….
Looks like AJAM raided CNN, to be honest … lots of ex-CNNers there.
Southern Beale
@ruviana:
Well how refreshing was it to see Ali Velshi do a story on Obamacare that wasn’t full of RW crap about defunding it? But instead came from the perspective of, it’s the law, now here’s what that means in the real world? The whole piece last night on rural Mississippi needing doctors .. that was such a nice change!
Also, can I say how much I LOVE hearing news about climate change? And not, “it’s not real,” but rather, “here’s the economic impact of climate change on x, y, z”?? OMG. It’s like I’ve been catapulted to reality central.
AJAM simply bypasses the political BS. I love that.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Yeah, though Senior had a higher class of crony than Jr. did, so they didn’t manage to fuck up as badly.
Roger Moore
@ThresherK:
They’re all made in China now, so the phones are shaped to fit Chinese people’s heads. That’s where your problem’s coming from. Actually, I suspect a big part of the problem is that they’ve been designed to be as easy as possible to manufacture, even at the cost of losing some functionality like fitting your face. Crap that’s barely suitable for its stated purpose is part of the Walmart paradigm.
Bill Arnold
@schrodinger’s cat:
AJ is available over the air in some areas of the U.S. (This was a surprise to me.)
NotMax
Refreshing that they, for now, schedule 6 minutes of ads per hour as opposed to the cable news standard 15+ minutes per hour.
Bill Arnold
@Keith P.:
Sadly (or maybe not sadly) the question was about handling of Katrina, not Katrina itself. Though I’m sure some subset of the responders thought the question was about Katrina, and Obama’s awesome secret elite weather control superpowers, sort of a male Super-Storm.
(He cannot control hurricanes, directly or indirectly.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Bill Arnold:
IIRC that was the plot device for the awful Fiennes-Thurman Avengers flick.
Avery Greynold
Some of us still remember that the Red Cross withheld emergency services to Katrina victims because the State/Fed governments wanted the blahs to self-deport to other states.
Matt McIrvin
Google “Clinton Ruby Ridge” for more wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey fun.
boatboy_srq
@sm*t cl*de: Roxie! This is the 80s! You don’t get ahead by redecorating: you demolish.
boatboy_srq
@scav: Sure explains Xtianity in a nutshell.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: Bush Sr had cronies. Shrub had wannabe-frat buddies. It makes a difference.