Disaster Porn and Other Bad News

Well, it took Hurricane Katrina, a major national disaster to knock the US 24-hour news spin cycle off Cindy Sheehan. I sympathize with Cindy's pain, and pity her psychopathology, but to me, she is the poster child for everything the Bastard Jihad says about America and the West regarding our hypersensitivity to casualties, our lack of memory and logic, and our lack of will to win. Spinning 24-hours per day on her may have been a way for our desperate national media outlets to fill air time until something more noteworthy came along. But it also gave comfort to our enemies, and in that, it was thoughtless and irresponsible at the very least.

What isn't making the news about Hurricane Katrina is that this is a real test of the fledgling National Incident Management System (NIMS). So far, it looks like there are a lot of bugs to work out of it. Instead of sober reporting covering and evaluating the local, state, and natiional responses (and usual lack of international response) to the disaster, the media fills our screens with "human interest" stories and graphic images of destruction. The same scenes can be replayed many times in a single day, or even a single hour, with almost no increase in information. It's a kind of disaster pornography instead of hard news.

Meanwhile, as Shiite Muslims gather for Ashura, they are betrayed by occasional Sunni Muslim sympathizers with the Bastard Jihad. Some of these sympathizers have actually handed out traditional tea and sweets to the Shiite pilgrims, but with poison in them. And a stampede on a bridge in Baghdad triggered by rumors of a suicide bomber in their midst has cost the lives of more than 600 pilgrims. That's many times more casualties that could have been caused by an actual suicide bomber.

That's the bad news. The Good News is that death and destruction are not the last Word. It's just the word for today.

So turn off all thoughts about tomorrow and get as good a night's sleep as you can. "Sufficient unto this day is the evil thereof," said Jesus, a 1st century Palestinian Jew, whom Christians regard as the Messiah, and whom Muslims regard as the Prophet Issa.