At War against Washington
Was George W. Bush watching television? Or did he continue to ride his bicycle around his ranch, located about an hour's flight away from the foundering of New Orleans? How did he manage not to see those images of clusters of humanity clinging to rooftops, screaming for help, or shut in without water or food, side by side with corpses left in their wheelchairs - those images that American television showed live to all America and the whole world? In any case, at the end of four days, Bush understood that it was time to have a look-see on the ground, in Baton Rouge.
We saw news stars like Brian Williams (from NBC, which belongs to General Electric) on the ground in New Orleans, exhausted, get angry: "I saw the bodies...I saw the horrible despair in the eyes of people who were going to die...I saw things I never expected to see in the United States." While an NBC reporter, Martin Savidge, observed, incredulous: "This is not Iraq; this is not Somalia...This is home." Flabbergasted by the silence and indifference of the political power against a background of images of haggard crying people, for four days journalist Brian Williams (NBC) never stopped asking: "Washington, are you looking? Do you hear?" On CNN, Chris Matthews also cried out, "Where are the buses? Where is the aid?"
Even the very Republican Fox News stopped its incessant coverage of looting and insecurity, finally comprehending that the scandal was not in the vandalized stores, but elsewhere.