As you may have noticed I have not posted a blog in more than a month, not that I was not writing or thinking but because I lost my grandmother a few days before Thanksgiving and my aunt, my mother’s eldest sister, who lived with my granny a few days before Christmas – add that to trying to keep my business opened, I have been extremely occupied. However this week, while at a restaurant, I was able to see the news coverage regarding Haiti. I also saw some of the coverage while over my daughters God parent’s house.
Now it is a very sad conundrum, the aftermath of the Earthquake. Seeing people dead in the streets, maimed, injured and dying is enough to make ones flesh crawl. It was devastation that I could not imagine. Now with that said, I don’t want folks to take this the wrong way albeit I don’t care – but what good is relief and news coverage if it only parades folks for the purpose of individual attention and ratings. What little I saw gave me this opinion and this as a man who has worked in places all over Africa stopping infectious disease pandemics in small rural communities. When I see news folk broadcasting, all I can think is that they may be sorry but really don’t care and that they really acting, just like the major relief groups as well. Unfortunatelly our government places more importance on getting military troops on the ground than physicians. And then there are the media pundits.
They ask questions as if the folk in Haiti could have dealt with this not recalling that the last Earthquake to occur was some 200 years ago. Then they stand over folks and as opposed to presenting news they present commentary. Figure if they really cared they would be sleeping in the fields with the folk they covering instead of hotels, and being out removing rubble instead of taking pictures and showing make-believe I care faces. Then there is the issue of not know history. Reporters never speak of how Woodrow Wilson and the US occupied Haiti in 1915, or how we basically killed folk on site, or how Bill Clinton continued the same Progressive political approach of Woodrow Wilson. And yep, I’m not in support of progressives for around the world they feel that folks can’t solve their own problems and prefer to interfere and mess things up and ex post facto blame the targets. We forget that Haiti was made poor by the French and even US who did not even recognize them as a sovereign nation on until 1862. We neglected them then for years and now we blame them and don’t even see how we made them or accept that we made the one of the four poorest nations on the globe. And I won’t even mention all this talk about orphans and having folks in America on TV looking sad because they can’t get the kid they wanted to adopt – when these same folks don’t even want to adopt black kids in their own backyard.
Yep, this is why I don’t watch TV news – they will pass anything over as objective information and we are too ignorant to see that what is presented is neither objective nor information but rather conjecture empty of historic perspective. Cut your TV folks, they making you make yourselves slaves. We should see that there is enough research on Earthquakes and their impact historically to act as if this is a new thing and we have to study to help folk on the ground – humbug. I wonder what else is really going on in the world, cause it aint being covered given eleventy-seven news reporters are all occupied with Haiti.
