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Published On: Sep 09, 2005 04:29 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Sep 09, 2005 04:29 PM
Absenting Myself
Tearing myself away from the coverage of
Katrina
On Tuesday, when I published my last post, things
were bad because of Katrina. I had no idea things would get worse. So much
worse. And, I fell into the funk/obsession that I guess I can first trace back
to Princess Diana's death when we were all glued to the set, trying to find out
how she died. And then of course 9/11, the watershed of so much, including, for
my purposes here, media coverage. In some ways, it was good that I was holed up
in Omaha, having to be somewhere during the day and working and such. That of
course didn't stop me from staying up until all hours watching
coverage.
With Katrina, we had our first real blogged disaster, and boy did I get sucked into the blog coverage. I think I am a media whore in general. I don't know why exactly--perhaps too many years of sitting way too close to the TV before my parents figured out that I was near-sighted. Anyway, I love media--right now I'm listening to my iPod (right now? why, Bebel Gilberto Remixed if you must know), typing this on my iBook, on a train to NYC...and if I had internet access, I'd be scanning webpages and checking email. I'm not saying I'm unique; I'm just saying that I have bought into the media saturation of our age.
So, I became obsessed with Katrina, because I am a media whore. However, it was also because I could be a media whore (almost like Orientalism: it wasn't just that the West invented the Orient; it was that they could invent the Orient...sorry for that dissertation moment)--there was so much out there to read, listen to, see. And, I had access: at work, at home, and, I suppose, on the way to work if I had chosen to download some podcasts.
And of course, I became obsessed with Katrina because of my antipathy for and continued shock at our government and this country. The last two points become intertwined with the blogs. The blogs were giving me new information every minute (whereas even the news networks ran out of footage, showing the same harrowing faces at the convention center again and again, so that their humanity, which had been so heart-wrenching at first, became metaphorical, detached, stripped of meaning), and they were giving me new information that increasingly supported my own already-constituted beliefs--that these people are just horrible. My watershed moment was when Gawker caught Condi Rice shopping for shoes at Ferragamo in NYC on Wednesday. Sans blogs, no one probably would have known about this--avec blogs, the world could see the craven disregard of this administration for anyone outside of it (Note: I'm not saying she should have been flying helicopters, plucking families off rooftops. It's just so incredibly callous and stupid. I mean, I started getting pangs of guilt during commercials during the height of my obsession, thinking about all of these people who wouldn't be able to afford the objects being advertised). After this blog-covered moment, I couldn't stop. I didn't really stop until the evacuations started in earnest and people stopped living in feces in the Superdome and stopped sweltering outside of the convention center.
So, I'm better now. My anger--surprisingly strong, surprisingly violent--eventually subsided as I resigned myself to this crappy government and crappy country I have to live in. OK, that sounds much more treasonous than I probably mean, but I'm just so tired of all of the little indignities and enormous injustices perpetrated on a huge swath of America. I hope most Americans are too, and we can do something really great at some point.
PS: and this seems the best place to mention this, but maybe I'll talk about it more in the future, but as tragic as Katrina has been for NO, it is this enormous opportunity (wrong word maybe?) to put in place housing and urban planning that actually works and is rationally considered. Not that it necessarily was or something, but I think there are just such smart ideas out there about how to literally build communities (see previous posts) that to not take advantage of them when you have to rebuild a city would just be dumb. But, then again, see above:)
With Katrina, we had our first real blogged disaster, and boy did I get sucked into the blog coverage. I think I am a media whore in general. I don't know why exactly--perhaps too many years of sitting way too close to the TV before my parents figured out that I was near-sighted. Anyway, I love media--right now I'm listening to my iPod (right now? why, Bebel Gilberto Remixed if you must know), typing this on my iBook, on a train to NYC...and if I had internet access, I'd be scanning webpages and checking email. I'm not saying I'm unique; I'm just saying that I have bought into the media saturation of our age.
So, I became obsessed with Katrina, because I am a media whore. However, it was also because I could be a media whore (almost like Orientalism: it wasn't just that the West invented the Orient; it was that they could invent the Orient...sorry for that dissertation moment)--there was so much out there to read, listen to, see. And, I had access: at work, at home, and, I suppose, on the way to work if I had chosen to download some podcasts.
And of course, I became obsessed with Katrina because of my antipathy for and continued shock at our government and this country. The last two points become intertwined with the blogs. The blogs were giving me new information every minute (whereas even the news networks ran out of footage, showing the same harrowing faces at the convention center again and again, so that their humanity, which had been so heart-wrenching at first, became metaphorical, detached, stripped of meaning), and they were giving me new information that increasingly supported my own already-constituted beliefs--that these people are just horrible. My watershed moment was when Gawker caught Condi Rice shopping for shoes at Ferragamo in NYC on Wednesday. Sans blogs, no one probably would have known about this--avec blogs, the world could see the craven disregard of this administration for anyone outside of it (Note: I'm not saying she should have been flying helicopters, plucking families off rooftops. It's just so incredibly callous and stupid. I mean, I started getting pangs of guilt during commercials during the height of my obsession, thinking about all of these people who wouldn't be able to afford the objects being advertised). After this blog-covered moment, I couldn't stop. I didn't really stop until the evacuations started in earnest and people stopped living in feces in the Superdome and stopped sweltering outside of the convention center.
So, I'm better now. My anger--surprisingly strong, surprisingly violent--eventually subsided as I resigned myself to this crappy government and crappy country I have to live in. OK, that sounds much more treasonous than I probably mean, but I'm just so tired of all of the little indignities and enormous injustices perpetrated on a huge swath of America. I hope most Americans are too, and we can do something really great at some point.
PS: and this seems the best place to mention this, but maybe I'll talk about it more in the future, but as tragic as Katrina has been for NO, it is this enormous opportunity (wrong word maybe?) to put in place housing and urban planning that actually works and is rationally considered. Not that it necessarily was or something, but I think there are just such smart ideas out there about how to literally build communities (see previous posts) that to not take advantage of them when you have to rebuild a city would just be dumb. But, then again, see above:)
Posted: Thu - September 8, 2005 at 05:46 PM |