Cable News PTSD

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/6/131152/4952:

I was one of the volunteers who helped greet the busloads of evacuees at the Astrodome... These were people from the neighborhoods white people insist will result in your death if you step inside their borders, but I can honestly say, I would have no qualms about inviting any of them into my house. In a situation like this, all those distinctions of class and race and education slip away... Everything was ugly and beautiful at the same time. I count the experience, as horrible as it was, as one of the high points of my life.

... When someone would suggest that these people stayed behind by choice, that they were in some way deserving of what they had undergone, my hear pounds. I have not cried since I was ten, but my eyes start to tear. I have been frustrated by the news before, but this was something different, a kind of rage and frustration that can’t be contained.

... The worst story, the one that still gives me nightmares, is the one about the boy who was arrested for stealing a bus that brought dozens of people to safety... When I read that, all the goodwill and faith I gained that night is transformed into hatred and disillusionment, my optimism turns into despair.

Always these stories have a specific purpose: to shut down empathy so that we won't demand action or accountability.

... I think of the black man who said his distrust of white people disappeared after being welcomed by our city with open arms, and of the gratitude on the faces of the people who had found themselves among volunteers who did not cast them away, as so many others clearly had.

The ugly and the beautiful. The beautiful came unwashed and packed on stolen buses. The ugly wears suits in front of TV cameras as they spread interested parties’ viciousness in exchange for access.