Gods Bless Newsweek

We rip the media so often here on the lefty side of the blogosphere (not as bad as the right's paranoid "MSM" fantasies, but still...), so I thought I should give kudos where they are richly deserved:

It takes a hurricane. It takes a catastrophe like Katrina to strip away the old evasions, hypocrisies and not-so-benign neglect. It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again. For the moment, at least, Americans are ready to fix their restless gaze on enduring problems of poverty, race and class that have escaped their attention. Does this mean a new war on poverty? No, especially with Katrina's gargantuan price tag. But this disaster may offer a chance to start a skirmish, or at least make Washington think harder about why part of the richest country on earth looks like the Third World.

It shouldn't have taken a hurricane. America should not need a disaster of Biblical proportions to wake us up from our complacency and sloth. Other than that, Newsweek -- the source of the paragraph quoted above -- nails it on the head. This is their cover story. The text of the cover?

Poverty, Race & Katrina
Lessons of a National Shame

Now that's the so-called "MSM" doing its gorram job.

We can, of course, expect the usual suspects to scream their usual slanders. "Bias!" "Liberals!" "Bush-haters!" To which I can only say the following, courtesy of Fox News:

SMITH: They won't let them walk out of the…convention center. .. they've locked them in there. The government said, "You go here, and you'll get help," or, "You go in that Superdome and you'll get help."

And they didn't get help. They got locked in there. And they watched people being killed around them. And they watched people starving. And they watched elderly people not get any medicine..

And they've set up a checkpoint. And anyone who walks up out of that city now is turned around. You are not allowed to go to Gretna, Louisiana, from New Orleans, Louisiana. Over there, there's hope. Over there, there's electricity. Over there, there is food and water. But you cannot go from there to there. The government will not allow you to do it. It's a fact.

HANNITY: All right, Shep, I want to get some perspective here, because earlier today...

SMITH: That is perspective! That is all the perspective you need!

So anyone want to tell me that Fox News is part of the liberal media? Watching the video, watching Geraldo Rivera in tears as he held up babies gone four, five, six days with little or no water, watching Shepard Smith screaming at Sean Hannity...Smith was right. That's all the perspective you need.
--
(/) Roland X
"WAKE UP!" -- Rage Against The Machine