American storm

     by Ed Bishop

     This column was originally published in the September 2005 issue.

     For the last 20 years or more American society has bought into the political idea that the country is best organized around the needs of the individual rather than the needs of the community. In fact, communal needs have been denigrated by politicians-and by the public in general.

     In the process, broader parts of American society-everything from healthcare and education to transportation and the environment-have been ignored. Americans have told themselves that those things are best taken care of by the marketplace. We even have for-profit prisons.

     At the same time, American society has come to believe that its once virulent structural racism has all but disappeared, that opportunities are available for everyone no matter race or gender.

     Affirmative action, welfare programs and school desegregation have been officially ridiculed. If you're poor in this country, we insist, it's your own fault and not the fault of structural racism or the lack of fair treatment.

     Along with these trends, for the last 20 years or more, Americans have wallowed in a chauvinism that goes beyond patriotism. We have participated in an orgy of arrogance, of flag worship, of self-serving religiosity, of a mindless imperialism that has left the rest of the world shocked and confused and sometimes violently angry with the United States. No matter-they're just jealous. We're God's chosen, we tell ourselves.

     And for those 20-plus years an ever more toothless and more corporate press has failed to question those assumptions. Worse, it has perpetuated and exacerbated the self-delusions. It has grown as arrogant as the political class it serves. For the most part American journalism has failed miserably in its mission to tell citizens the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

     And then came Hurricane Katrina.

     For more than a week in late August and early September it was fascinating to watch the mainstream news media struggle with what they were seeing with their own eyes in New Orleans.

     The racism was obvious. The lack of money for communal needs-levees and infrastructure-was obvious. The lack of moral character in political leaders, both Republican and Democrat, was obvious. That America was being humbled was obvious.

     This is going to sound more sarcastic than I mean but, without someone to bomb, the Bush administration seemed befuddled by the disaster unfolding before them. And it was obvious.

     And most fascinating of all was the fleeting recognition that sometimes crossed the faces of TV journalists that the story they were covering didn't fit the assumptions they held so dear. The news media were, in short, confused by their own reporting.

     The only heroes in the entire terrible tragedy were people who placed community over the individual. A black man kept going back into the flooded streets to bring out old people in his boat. A middle-aged white man from the bayou rescued people in his swamp buggy. A doctor refused to leave his endangered hospital. A hospice worker waded through waist-deep filth to find her dying patients. In other words, people who cared more about others than themselves, who treasured their community more than his or her individual needs, were the only effective relief for days on end.

     The immediate communal response had been destroyed long ago by the politics of greed.

     As Tim Russert said on the "Today" show, "This has exposed the fault lines of American society."

     What he failed to say was that Katrina had exposed the fault lines of American journalism.

     Television reporters wanted to talk about the looters and the violence, to blame the victims, that was their usual template. But in the end they couldn't, in the end they were forced by their own humanity to come back to people who stole to feed their babies, to those who searched for food in garbage and to the dead bodies draped in old blankets inside the very shelter where officials had told them they would be safe.

     It seemed that America's elite TV reporters had their eyes opened by the horrors of New Orleans.

     Let's hope they stay that way.

     It's difficult to have a political debate when one side absolutely knows the mind of God.