Link: AlterNet: Hurricane Reality vs. Right-Wing Ideology. From Joshua Holland:
The first ideological victim of the hurricane on the right was the notion of a classless, race-blind society in which we all share the same opportunity to thrive. A media that routinely deletes any reference to race and class was forced to openly confront the desperate and almost purely monochromatic reality of the hurricane's survivors.
The notion -- briefly floated by some conservatives -- that Katrina's victims have some personal responsibility for not leaving when the evacuation orders came down was swiftly deflated. The Washington Post noted that "living paycheck to paycheck made leaving impossible" ...
The New York Times' David Brooks -- who seemed especially shaken by the images coming out of the Gulf Coast -- lamented that Katrina represented a confidence-shattering rip in our social fabric as "the rich escaped while the poor were abandoned," a move he called "the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield."
On the question of class, the storm landed at an inopportune moment for conservatives. Katrina hit smack in the middle of a year-long public debate about the United States' growing inequality (in just about every way one can measure it).
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