Redline wrote:...cut to a scene of Dave Chappelle cannibalizing Gary Coleman...

So wrong...







I still chuckled

He makes no sense whatsoever. He sounds like he's on acid.
If you are going to pull that shit, you have to get it together first.
You have to do it smooth or else you are doing your cause more harm than good.

AP's story on this is here . It is a biased piece against him, portraying all the other celebrities as being talented and kind-hearted and Kanye West as a raving lunatic.

he was frustrated and angry and he wanted to air this out, i can't see why people are calling him an idiot. sure that "bush doesn't care about black people" is not the most eloquent way of saying things, but based on what everyone has been seeing on tv, this opinion is justified. and i'm all for people not following the scripit on occasions like this.

well i admit this is the first time i hear of kayne west.

greg wrote:I don't believe that the relief was purposely stalled because race or class. I believe that the people in charge were/are simply inept.

And

greg wrote:We suffer from a "not my problem" disease in our culture.

I can't help but feel that these two points are related. While I don't necessarily suspect that those in charge of this government intentionally deprived this region of assistance due to its racial and economic makeup, I can entertain the possibility that they demonstrated a "not my problem" attitude towards this event that may not have been in display if a similar event threatened another community of different racial and economic makeup.

Marsupialized wrote:He makes no sense whatsoever. He sounds like he's on acid.

Really? Did I miss some part where he screamed about being covered with spiders?

Marsupialized wrote:If you are going to pull that shit, you have to get it together first.

I certainly agree that it could've had more impact if he'd delivered his message in a more "together" fashion.

Marsupialized wrote:You have to do it smooth...

Much easier to say than to actually do.

Marsupialized wrote:...or else you are doing your cause more harm than good.

Unfortunately, I have to agree, as ultimately his remarks will be discredited by major media outlets.

no, kanye was not eloquent... but i agree with whoever it was that said he seemed really honest. it appeared he's just another one of us who feels really affected by and appalled with the situation. i don't believe that the slow response was racially motivated, but i'm sure that played a subconscious factor when sorting through/distributing their meager resources. anyway, yeah, mike myers was like........ what the fuck!!!! thank god i'm canadian!

greg wrote:I don't believe that the relief was purposely stalled because race or class. I believe that the people in charge were/are simply inept. As has been stated before, plenty, there should have been a plan. All concerned has known this possibility.
I am however, more embarrassed by the lack of effort by our citizenship as a whole. After finding out that the levees had broke, we all knew what was to come. We should have acted as fellow citizens. Not wait and see how the government would handle it. Anyone with any ability to help should have plowed into the area with aid independently. No one would stop us. If they did there would be another thing to complain about, but there is no excuse in not trying. We suffer from a "not my problem" disease in our culture.

Why aren't you in New Orleans right now, then?
The reason I'm not is because I am not competent to engage in air and water based search and rescue operations in flooded, devastated cities filled with desperate and dying people.
But that's just me.

greg wrote:There are stories of people escaping the French Quarter on Tuesday in cars! If they got out, surely people who can help can get in. How many trips did the dozens of news agencies take in and out of the city? Surely others could follow.
Anyone with any capacity to help should have helped!

So in your estimation, everyone with a functioning body, a couple hundred bucks for gas, and access to a car has the "capacity" to help. And if every one of those people went down there to "help," it would do nothing other than increase the magnitude of the clusterfuck.
To think that a large scale evacuation of a flooded and destroyed city can be carried out by well-meaning Joe Sixpacks with zero training, little familiarity with the land, no organization, but with a cooler full of sandwiches and a chevy blazer, this is delusional.
If you are not already organized before the disaster hits, like the red cross and the hodgepodge of gov't agencies down there now, you are not going to be doing a whole lot to help the situation. About the best you can do is run for your life. This is what a lot of New Orleans cops have already done.
To the extent that the gov't agencies such as HSS and FEMA were not organized and were unwilling or unable to grasp the magnitude of the problem, that's the crime here, because that's their fucking job. That is one of the things we pay taxes for.
News agencies can get all over the city because they have helicopters.
The levees broke on Tuesday. My understanding is that the city continued to fill until Thursday. So it's quite possible that the people who got out via car on Tuesday got out at the last possible moment for that kind of exit.

greg wrote:Every helicopter in the region should have been there in a day. Anyone with a boat, barge, or raft on the Mississippi should have headed south. This is a sinking ship.
It's not my problem.
This is a person about to drown in a pool.
This is a baby walking into the street.
This is a friend trying to commit suicide.
Drop everything, and do something!
The first hours are the most crucial.
You don't wait for the government to tell you where to go. If they do their job then all the better. If they don’t, (which they haven’t) then you have. Of course there is a risk. This was a call to duty as citizens, and not too many people answered.
Our government failed, yes.
Blame Bush. He’s a dick-head. Hopefully a Mayor Bilandic type situation will occur with Bush. That still wont change the fact that people sat by watching this happen to one of the best cities in the union.

Again, where were you? Are you in Chicago?
Good intentions are great. That's a starting point. To suggest that's all you need, is a few hundred thousand regular joes with good intentions to respond to a disaster of this magnitude...I just think that's incredibly naive.
Picture thousands of people driving their cars into New Orleans in the hurricane's immediate aftermath, to pick people up and drive them out. Then picture the levees breaking, as they did, and picture the traffic jams you would have with all these well meaning people still in the city. Picture thousands of these well meaning people being turned into well meaning corpses by a situation that they have neither the training nor the organization to deal with. That's the solution?
The solution is for this sort of thing to be dealt with by the people who are organized and trained for it, and that really means the government, in various forms.
Their training should have been better, their organization should have been better, their response time should have been better, and there should have been more of everything to save as many lives as possible.
That's who I blame, not Joe Sixpack who didn't rush into the chaos with his flashlight and swiss army knife.

whether or not he sounded like an idiot (and in my opinion, he did), i think kanye's actions did way more harm than good. if you think about it in terms of your everyday american, hearing something like that could actually cause people who don't already feel prejudiced to become more prejudiced.

as a vocal opponent of celebrities using their status to hop up on any soapbox they can find and pontificate, it fills me with ire to see ANYONE do this, be it bono or michael stipe or kanye west.

and finally, don't look now, but i believe 'leeza rice, mr. powell and alphonso jackson might disagree with him. i think his first term cabinet had more african americans than any other president in history. there aren't even any jews in this guy's cabinet. kanye's speaking for the wrong people, yo.



i started rambling and that's where i got off track. and then i made this closing statement.

slowriot wrote:whether or not he sounded like an idiot (and in my opinion, he did), i think kanye's actions did way more harm than good. if you think about it in terms of your everyday american, hearing something like that could actually cause people who don't already feel prejudiced to become more prejudiced.

No it couldn't. Unless you are already predisposed to see one black person speaking and think that it's appropriate for you to turn your discomfort with that one person's words into an excuse for you to feel contempt for the entire group.
In which case you're already a racist, and blaming it on Kanye West is just bullshitting yourself.
When I hear Kanye West speaking, I think he speaks for Kanye West. If I get pissed at what he says, I get pissed at him, not every black person in the country.
Know what does a lot of actual harm? The constant, leering media eye on this disaster that has to keep reminding you that people are "looting." As though there is anything in that city that can be salvaged. As though people aren't starving, dying of thirst, or running out of medicine, diapers, etc., and reacting to those realities as any white person would.
No, they're "looting," and we need to send the army in, to stop them from "looting" all that useless and waterlogged inventory.

slowriot wrote:and finally, don't look now, but i believe 'leeza rice, mr. powell and alphonso jackson might disagree with him. i think his first term cabinet had more african americans than any other president in history. there aren't even any jews in this guy's cabinet. kanye's speaking for the wrong people, yo.

Well shit, I guess a guy who hires a few black people can't be racist. Never mind how the political policies he puts in place and for which he bears direct responsibility might affect the other 99.999999999% of the population of black people in this country. Never mind that he leads a political party that has a traditionally hostile relationship with the black community, and has a well documented history of using racial fearmongering as an election tool.
If you think what Kanye West said finds no sympathy or agreement in the black community, I think you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Yo.