Making Hay out of trajedy: Preachers, Politicians & Brownwood Talk Show Host

STEVE BLOW - Dallas Morning News
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, September 25, 2005


I sure have been hankering for a rain. After all this commotion, I sure hope we get one.
As of Saturday evening, a lot of bluster was all I had seen of Hurricane Rita.
I really didn't intend to write about hurricanes today. Goodness knows we're deluged on that topic. But right now it's hard to think about anything else.
I want to cry every time I think about those poor elderly folks on that bus. Who could have guessed that tragedy from Hurricane Rita would hit first in Dallas County?
And here's something I'm wondering: What sort of wicked sin is going on in Port Arthur?
Some of the hellfire preachers were quick to pronounce Hurricane Katrina a judgment of God on sinful New Orleans.
Yeah, the Big Easy makes an easy target. Now let's hear them explain how the hardworking people of Port Arthur and Beaumont and Lake Charles brought God's wrath on themselves.
Actually, what I would like most is to not hear another word. I have had it with people trying to make hay out of tragedy, whether it's preachers or politicians.
President Bush and the Republicans have rightly taken some lumps over the response to Katrina. But the blood-in-the-water reaction of some Democrats has been disgusting, too.
Now is the time for politicians to take the high road – if they can remember how to find it.
And I think I'll scream if I get one more snotty e-mail forwarded my way about what ungrateful slobs the evacuees are or how the NAACP and the ACLU never sheltered anyone during the storm.
Are some people never allowed to come down off their soapboxes?
One particular e-mail came so many times that I finally had to investigate. The writer – unidentified of course, seemingly a woman – tells how her parents worked at the rest stop on Interstate 20 at the Texas state line. Busloads of Katrina evacuees stopped there.
"Daddy worked pretty much all night. He and my mom said the people were HORRIBLE. Nasty, filthy mouthed, ungrateful," she writes. "TxDOT had to pretty much scour the rest area and restrooms after they left."
Well, it goes on and on. And the whole thing just makes Melissa Wilson sick. "Oh, it's not true," she said mournfully.
Ms. Wilson is supervisor of the state's travel information center at that rest stop. She was on duty almost nonstop for the four days of the evacuation.
And let me set the scene there. During that time, 278 buses stopped. With about 50 passengers crammed in each, that's almost 14,000 people.
Initially, the idea was just to provide the evacuees with a bottle of water and a chance to stretch. But word spread in the surrounding communities, and the rest stop became an incredible scene of care and support for the evacuees – hot meals, toiletries, clean clothing, refreshments for the road.
"Everyone that I came in contact with was so nice and appreciative and just couldn't thank us enough for what we were doing," Ms. Wilson said.
She would have heard of any trashy behavior as described in the e-mail, she said. "I never had one person report to me that anybody was ungrateful. Not one."
The e-mail upsets her because it's a final sour note to what was a wonderful, uplifting event. "It took what was such a positive experience and turned it around," she said. "And what was the point of that e-mail, other than to stir up hatred?"
It's a good question. And a better one is why thousands of people see fit to keep spreading it. On one forward, the sender wrote, "Perhaps it's true and perhaps it's not."
So why send it? Is concern for the truth really that casual?
You know, our contempt for the looters down in Louisiana burned bright hot. But those people were just stealing stuff.
E-mails of this sort are stealing something far more precious and hard to replace – our compassion, our faith in others, our bond of unity.
It's another form of looting, done with the click of a mouse.
How about if we climb off our soapboxes a moment? Right now, prayer and support are what our neighbors really need.

E-mail sblow@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/sblow/stories/DN-blow_25met.ART0.East.Edition2.3251513.html