object lesson
The
reaction to this is the sort of thing I'm on about here with my lack of interest in the politics around Katrina:
Barbara Bush: "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," she was quoted as saying in an interview on National Public Radio...
"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," ...
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."
Stupid thing to say? You betcha. Well, not even necessarily a stupid point, I don't think, but an incredibly stupid way to say it.
Even if you're homeless, it obviously sucks to have your entire frigging home town sucked out to sea. The upshot is that now, at least, you have three hots and a cot, and reasonable, if not idyllic, shelter.
If you're not homeless, but getting massacred by debt...well, that's mostly gone now. I have no idea how this will work out as far as insurance goes for people who lost homes and cars and such, but I'm betting that they won't be held responsible for those loans. Acts of God, and all that.
Again, is having your house and all your personal belongings suddenly at the bottom at the Gulf of Mexico a pleasant experience, or the preffered way to get out of debt? No. Obviously.
But, if you've ever been seriously in debt, just getting rid of it can be a huge plus. I have a car that I haven't been able to afford the payments on for a while now, and while I would much rather sell it than have it stolen, at least it would be off my list of headaches. I'd get about 3/4 what its worth from the insurance company, and be able to move forward.
That's pretty minor debt-wise compared to what alot of people have. Once again, not the best situation to be in, but, for some people, especially the very poor, there are pluses. Not the ideal way to get there, but there it is. Look around (no link, sorry, too lazy), there are stories of people saying exactly that. Sucks, but whereas before they were behind a boulder-sized eightball, the kind of debt that will ruin a person's life, they are now at a more or less blank slate. Sitting in Houston, looking around and doing the same thing they were doing: trying to figure out how to move forward, with added greif but minus a big stone around their necks.
So what Barbara was saying was an incredibly poorly phrased, somewhat rich-people ignorant statement of what at least some people are feeling. I don't know about you, but it dosen't come as a shock to me that the Bushes are rich people, and tend to think like them. So are all our illustrious politicans, not all of whom are Republicans. For that matter, the top several wealthiest Senators are Democrats; wealth is a requirement to play in politics these days.
But what drives me crazy is the hours that people have dedicated to this single stupid remark, like the editorial above, and the blatant politicization of it. Rush, earlier today, was making light of it, minimizing it, like a good hack. I don't blame him, the reaction from that is pretty darn ridiculous. But you know that if a Clinton or Rockefeller had made those remarks, Rush and Hannity would be all over it; it would be interspersed with their commentary on...everything. They'd be playing that bit over and over and over and over, until even I was tired of hearing it.
The point is: It dosen't mean anything. Nothing at all. It is not indicative of anything that should come as a shock to anybody. It was a stupid, poorly phrased offhand remark that has blown up into this big huge thing, and that is the sort of thing that I am really, really tired of hearing about. I don't care. I fail to see why anybody should care. It has zero bearing on the very, deadly serious task at hand. It's just people screaming at each other about nothing: hot air, white noise.
UPDATE:
What she said. Hate that, when somebody says exactly what I've been trying to say for days, and better. Drives me crazy. I should just delete the past several posts and put up a link to this.
