Media Report

This morning I found out that two blogs I read faithfully were both talking about the American news accounts of the earthquake in Kasmir.

I'd like to talk about that, too, but first I need to express my profound sympathy to the peoples of Pakistan, India, and, especially, to those affected. These cataclysmic, ineffable tragedies, whether man-made or natural, give me pause and often put me in a funk. Quite frankly, I can no more conceive of twenty thousand deaths than I can ten billion galaxies.

Now, my related issue.

Right after Katrina, when the news was all about those stranded at the Superdome and the New Orleans convention center, I kept hearing over and over about how scenes resembled the third world and how American citizens were being treated like third world refugees. Those comments, to put it mildly, disgusted me.

I regularly watch BBC World news on PBS. For the past several months nearly every night's show has a short report from the Sudan, Malawi, or another country neglected by the US media. I've seen countless, sickening reports of famine, displacement, rape, murder, and political strife and the temporary aid camps we in the west give to those on the wrong end of nature's and mankind's wrath. Those pitiful people, who've done no wrong, would probably move to the Superdome in a moment, and it's an insult to them to compare their plight to those of huddled near the convention center.

What struck me is how willing we are to subject the Africans to shabby tents and lengthy trips for water, how blind an eye we cast on their scrabbling for filling, but non-nutrtional roots or the casual, inhumane dropping of wheat from helicopters as if we're feeding animals at the zoo, but making American citizens wait a day or two for three thousand packaged meals is treating them like "third world citizens."

What happened in and around New Orleans was horrible, no doubt about it, but it never even approached the horrors we permit in developing countries. Those waiting in New Orleans had clothes for God's sake, a luxury we're more than happy to deny those who don't hold blue passports.

The earthquake in Pakistan, once again, I think demonstrates precisely the difference between the developed and under-developed countries. Our homes and buildings aren't constructed of mud, as were those in Iran and here, our depots are overflowing with blankets, food, and cots, and those in the rest of the world have none of that.

We send ours from New Orleans to Texas in air conditioned buses. The women of the Darfur region, after being raped and their husbands killed, get to walk to a barely leveled camp that teems with disease, starving children, and no prospects for any future life.

That's what I consider the third world. Not the steps of the Superdome.