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| Tsunamis and Death-Toll Pornography (Bush Spends MORE on Inaugural Parties Than Disaster Aide!!!) |
| 12.30.04 (8:10 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush only spent a paltry $15 million in assistance for those millions of people whose lives have been destroyed by the Asian tsunami--[i] Then [/i]when embarrassed by European nations that gave more in disaster relief, he was forced to commit another $25 million!!! However, the corrupt Mad King George Bush is squandering an obscene $41 million on his lavish, extravagant inaugural parties, balls and dinners-- [i]more[/i] than any other president in history (even though Bush/Cheney recklessly have run-up the largest deficits in U.S. history & average Americans are worse off!!!)-- [i]And[/i], at a time U.S. troops & innocent Iraqi civilians are[i] dying and being injured & maimed [/i]in his illegal & immoral war in Iraq, [i]and[/i] hundreds of thousands of human beings are dying, ill and suffering in Asia as a result of the tsunami!!! Is Bushy-boy[i] really [/i]a "christian"??? Nope, he is a fascist, hypocritical crook ([i]and[/i] War Criminal) who should be [i]impeached[/i] for Crimes Against Humanity that [i]he & his neo-con regime [/i]committed in Iraq!!![/b]
As the number of casualties following the tsunamis that struck south-east Asia and parts of east Africa reaches the 60,000 mark, I find myself falling prey to one of the most unpleasant side-effects of 24-hour television and web news coverage: an addiction to death-toll pornography. Like a junkie who finds himself locked inside of a drug store, with uninterrupted access to CNN, the BBC and the web I have an inexhaustible supply of material to feed my self-destructive habit.
When the news of the catastrophe broke on Sunday, early estimates put the number of dead at around 5,000. By the end of Tuesday, that number had jumped to over 50,000. News anchors and reporters regularly updated the audience on the "latest" figures, and "news tickers" at the bottom of the screen flashed casualty numbers like so much stock market information or so many football scores.
As the numbers continue to grow, however, my humanity and compassion seem to diminish. Initial horror upon hearing the news has morphed into an urge to hear more updates and to see more video footage of massive waves washing away cars, hotels, boats, and, in case we forget, people. As the numbers rocket upward, I play a macabre guessing game. How high will the death count go? 100,000? 200,000? Could it be a quarter of a million? The numbers are so huge, and my experience with death on this scale (or any scale, for that matter) so minuscule, that I simply cannot comprehend what is going on, Statistics are the only thing I can lean on.
I can only speak for myself, of course, but my guess is that I am not alone in my occasional addiction to death-toll pornography. I consider myself to be a relatively critical person when it comes to the media, and yet, for some reason, I continue to kid myself that by watching hour after hour of news coverage from India, Thailand and Sri Lanka I am a "well-informed" person. In all honesty, I crossed that "well-informed" line a long time ago, and so I have come to the conclusion that I am watching the aftermath of this natural disaster for reasons other than pure information. It isn't entertainment, but it is a form of fascination that taps into a primal fear of death.
What jolted me out of my self-deception - and brought me to write this article -was something that I saw this morning on the BBC news. In the middle of some stock crisis footage from Thailand, there was a brief shot of the naked corpse of a young man hanging from the branch of a tree. The fact that I was sitting in my comfortable living room, drinking coffee, looking at a naked corpse in a tree convinced me that what I was watching was not news, but a perverted form of reality television. I wondered how I would feel if that naked boy had been a member of my family: his undignified death a passing spectacle for all the world to see over their mugs of morning coffee.
The bigger the number of victims, and the further away they live from us, of course, the easier it becomes to distance ourselves from what we are watching. We can accept video of hundreds of anonymous bodies washing up onto the shores of southern India, but would we accept video of the corpse of a young girl floating in a neighborhood swimming pool being shown on our local news? Through the news, we have become accustomed to seeing people in the developing world as victims: victims of war, victims of famine, victims of disease, and victims of natural disasters. In their eternal state of victim-hood, these people have had their right to individuality and dignity stripped, and thus their corpses are fair game for the evening news.
None of this is to say that this is not a story worthy of round-the-clock coverage, because it is. What I am suggesting, however, is that we should be thinking about the mode of the coverage: the obsession with death tolls (most of which are inaccurate anyway), the repetition of horrific footage, and close-up pictures of obviously grieving family members.
Coverage of the crisis is needed to alert the world to what is a massive humanitarian disaster, and showing death is a part of that. What is not needed, however, is coverage that panders to the dark, voyeuristic sides of our psyches.
[b]Christian Christensen is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Communication at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Turkey. He can be reached at bahcesehircc@yahoo.com.[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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posted by: tomi (reply)
post date: 12.30.04 (11:35 am)
How about a letter-writing campaign asking the White House to cancel the Inaugural festivities and donate the money to tsunami relief?
posted by: WhyNot (reply)
post date: 12.31.04 (2:42 am)
Reply to: tomi
That's a neat idea, Tomi. I'll look around the web to see if there isn't already such a scheme launched by someone.
posted by: CarteBlanche (reply)
post date: 12.31.04 (5:31 am)
Reply to: tomi
I agree 100% and have written media outlets (CNN, NY Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) and Congressmen to request that they do so... Thanks
posted by: CarteBlanche (reply)
post date: 12.31.04 (5:32 am)
Reply to: WhyNot
Please let me know WhyNot... I've written letters to media outlets... and would like to step-up this protest against such gluttonous, corrupt behavior while others are suffering so terribly. Thanks
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