The Show—Evening Edition

Well, I’ve been sitting here trying to think of things to do besides packing, which, basically, ranks as one of my least favorite activities. For goodness sake, I’d rather eat cucumbers (a vegetable the existence of which, I believe, constitutes the best argument yet against intelligent design).

So I decided I’d put in a late-night appearance here on the Show.

We have a story from the Cybercast News Service—a right-wing news service—that you’re probably not going to see anywhere in the “mainstream” media:

Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans.

Liberals in the aftermath of the storm were quick to allege that the Bush administration delayed its response to the catastrophe because most of the victims were black. Damu Smith, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, in September said that the federal government "ignored us, they forgot about us ... because we look like we look."

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in October said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasn't fit to help the storm's victims because "there are not enough blacks high up in FEMA" and added that, "certainly the Red Cross is the same."

Rapper Kanye West used his time on NBC's telethon for the hurricane victims to charge that, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

But the state's demographic information suggests that whites in New Orleans died at a higher rate than minorities. According to the 2000 census, whites make up 28 percent of the city's population, but the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals indicates that whites constitute 36.6 percent of the storm's fatalities in the city.African-Americans make up 67.25 percent of the population and 59.1 percent of the deceased. Other minorities constitute approximately 5 percent of the population and represented 4.3 percent of the storm's fatalities.

Hmm… In and of itself, the statistical disparity is difficult to explain. I suspect that, maybe, the white population in the city had a high percentage of helpless elderly people (think: dreadful, disgusting semi-governmental nursing homes) compared to the black population.

Or it could just be that the white people living in New Orleans were living there because they wanted to, whereas many of the black people were living there because they had to—meaning that a higher percentage of blacks were fine with heading over to the superdome as opposed to barricading themselves in their homes.

Either way, the more interesting question is how this statistical reality—the fact that per capita more whites died in New Orleans than blacks—fits into the on-going “national dialogue” (i.e. bizarre, racial conspiracy theory created and fostered by the left and the mainstream media) regarding the governmental response to hurricane Katrina.

Now, blaming the federal government for what happened in New Orleans is a bit ridiculous in itself. At the best, the federal government is to blame only for its failure to foresee such a spectacular failure—indeed, complete disintegration—of city and state government in the days after the hurricane. But blaming President Bush personally goes beyond ridiculous and falls squarely in the realm of sheer lunacy.

But the left has been more than willing to traffic in such premises and, so, assuming that the federal government and President Bush are to blame, what are we to make of the fact that a white person in New Orleans was more likely to die than a black person?

Even in the week after the hurricane struck, I was struck by how much media attention the black people in New Orleans were getting, compared to the media’s near indifference to the plight of white people in the city—not to mention the media’s complete and utter indifference to the plight of the rural whites all across Louisiana and Mississippi who were hit just as hard by the hurricane.

As hysterical left-wing commentators rightly pointed out, the media only showed images of black people looting; what they ignored, though, was that the media showed only images of black people, whether they be images of looting or suffering.

As I have noted before on the Show, the mainstream media/the left tends to ignore the plight of disadvantaged groups that do not vote largely Democratic. Only the pet groups get the attention.

As another example, the meth epidemic that has struck rural whites in the last decade has, until very recently, been virtually ignored by the major opinion makers. Contrast that with the crack epidemic that struck inner city black communities in the 1980’s—and how much media attention the crack problem received.

As a rough yardstick, a google search for the exact phrase “meth epedimic” gets 68,200 returns, while a search for the exact phrase “crack epedimic” yields 176,000 returns.

The difference in media attention is as clear as, well, night and day.

So, essentially, if something awful happens to you, it very much behooves you to look like a lot of other people who vote Democratic. Generally speaking, if you want the world to hear about your suffering, it’s best to be black or gay. It used to be helpful to be Jewish or non-Cuban Hispanic or Catholic—but that’s rapidly changing as voting patterns change.

It also helps if you live in or near a major urban center. Not only is it easier for the reporters and journalists to get there, but also they can enjoy the far superior restaurants and nightlife while in town. And, you make think I’m just joking, but I don’t think the location factor can be discounted. Reporters are human beings too; they hate packing just as much as the rest of us. And it’s way more convenient to cover a story in the Bronx or Compton or Roxbury (or New Orleans) than it is to cover a tragic story unfolding out in the largely white hinterlands.