It’s about more than the death toll

September 21, 2005

Apparently, I don’t read right-wing blogs and columns nearly enough, because if I did, I might have realized that some very high-profile conservative voices have been downplaying the significance of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation along the Gulf Coast.

We all heard early estimates about literally thousands of people who may have been killed by the storm. A couple of days after Katrina made land fall, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suggested as many as 10,000 people perished. Fortunately, those estimates proved incorrect

The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle noted today, however, that a surprising number of conservatives have concluded that the lower-than-expected number of deaths means that Katrina simply wasn’t as bad as we’ve been led to believe.

The erroneous 10,000 figure, in the eyes of some commentators, seems to be evidence that the media has exaggerated the extent of the Katrina disaster — and the importance of the Katrina story. Noting on Monday that the current death toll in New Orleans stood at 579, Cliff May crowed on National Review Online that the number was not only less than 10,000 but was also “much less than the more than 35,000 killed by a heat wave in Europe two summers ago. You recall the debate that set off about European heartlessness, racism, and discrimination? No, neither do I.”

Meanwhile, conservative columnist Victor Davis Hanson declared: “For all the media’s efforts to turn the natural disaster of New Orleans into a racist nightmare, a death knell for one or the other political parties or an indictment of American culture at large, it was none of that at all. What we did endure instead were slick but poorly educated journalists, worried not about truth but about preempting their rivals with an ever-more-hysterical story, all in a fuzzy context of political correctness about race, the environment and the war.”

I had no idea so many conservatives were making such a painfully ridiculous case. Zengerle ably sets them straight.

[T]he horror of Katrina was not just about the number of people who died in the storm. Rather, the horror was about the squalor and anarchy of the Superdome and the chaos at the convention center; the horror was about our poorest, most vulnerable citizens being all but abandoned in their hour of greatest need. Most of all, the horror was about the realization that this was actually happening in the United States.

I expected, perhaps naively, that any decent human being could see what was happening in New Orleans and appreciate the seriousness of the crisis. Apparently not. If thousands didn’t die, then, in the minds of some on the right, Katrina was “hyped.”

Are these same conservatives prepared to argue that early estimates of fatalities on 9/11, which fortunately proved to be too high, makes that tragedy any less significant?

i suspect that what’s happened is that after a brief period where a few on the right actually criticized the bush administration, the usual hacks, flunkies, and propagandists have all seen the horrible polling for the bush administration and are rallying round with their usual nitwit arguments to obscure the issues at hand.

but let’s put these sick fucks to the test: do hansen and may believe that, since katrina was no big deal, bush should withdraw his $200B package? after all, no big deal shouldn’t require as much money as iraq, unless may and hanson are prepared to argue that iraq should be our benchmark of no big deal-ism….

  • NO BIG DEAL???? Are they crazy? ??Try making that statement to
    any New Orleans area refugee (myself included) with a straight face. To
    the right-wing morons who dare to utter such foolishness I would say:
    You had better hope there are no crowbars or tire irons handy or you
    may have a complete reworking of your skull.
    Not only is conservatism bankrupt it is devoid now of whatever shred
    of credibility it ever pretended to have.
    Let’s see if these geniuses will be saying these kind of things if Houston
    is smashed to pieces. Maybe even Tom Delay and Tom Tancredo will
    have to admit there is more than a small problem going on at that point.
    If I were a Republican operative it would seem like now is a good time
    to be packing your bags and going into permanent exile while you still can
    get away. The jig is up, boys.

  • The (so-far) much lower than expected death toll is a tribute to the success the local authorities had in evacuating New Orleans and moving those who didn’t evacuate to higher ground. Yes, there should have been better local arrangements to evacuate the remainder after the storm, but notice that the evacuation success puts the lie to another right-wing effort to diminish the blame levelled against the Bush administration.

  • Here is a corollary point: even if the death toll is smaller than expected, there is largely no reporting of it in the MSM. I said more about this issue and DianeL is keeping track of the issue in depth here.

    CNN has prominently reported this AM, but otherwise the MSM is AWOL on this issue. The suspicion is that apart from the difficulties in getting the numbers that the MSM bosses see this as problematic for republican leadership — remember, VIACOM hearts repubs!

  • Am I the only one cynical enough to have believed from the very beginning that they have been suppressing the numbers to keep them below the death toll on 9/11?

  • Howdy Memekiller,

    Nope, you’re not the only one at all. I hadn’t considered it would be to keep
    the numbers below 9/11 levels but I do think that we’re not getting the
    real picture to be sure. It’s what they do best. “Watch closely now, keep your eye on the ball under the middle shell”

  • I would add that the horror is also the certain knowledge that these assholes have had 4 years to work on disaster readiness and haven’t done dick. (Well, surely they’ve done Dick, he’s safe and much richer too). New Orleans was blown away and they weren’t even ready to rescue people screaming and waving on their roofs–and that with advance notice. A complete and utter failure, incompetence of catastrophic proportions. I live in New York City, you know, the place on the map with the big target on it, and it’s obvious that if/when another terr’ist strike hits, these guys won’t have a clue what to do. They will just be prayin’ to Jesus in some bunker in Nebraska–thankin’ God for decreasin’ the surplus population and keepin’ the righteous, you know, them, safe. No, the tragedy of New Orleans is there for all the world to see. You can’t spin it, you can’t rationalize it; it is what it is no matter how many words a wingnut types. And all this from the horrific administration that fools voted for a second time, just to keep us safe.

  • I saw in the news today that the death toll has hit 1000 with another month of searching left to do. That’s a lot of loss.

    I think one thing that is important to remember is that the Mayor of New Orleans is a Republican. At least he was up until 3 weeks before he decided to run for Mayor. He contributed to Bush and other Republican politicians. If his 10,000 number was hysterical, it wasn’t a Democratic hysteria.

    Dale,

    Bush is fit. He’s just not fit to be President.

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