Lenin’s Tomb
wtf? reality? Mary Landrieu still speaks with rhotic Rs and looks like she's 25 while according to Wikipedia she is 50 and comes from LA (not that one, the other one).
What are "rhotic Rs"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho...-
rhotic_accents
Do you mean she speaks with non-rhotic r's?
Tearful outbursts appear to be de rigeur right now: if you don't join in, you're going to look like a heartless bastard. Hence the emotional hyperinflation. I predict that the overheated feelings-market will soon cool down, though. Once the reconstructors get down to work (with a chorus of hoarse, manly "harumphs"!), it'll be business as usual in the TV studios too - uplifting stories of A City Reborn - until the economy crashes completely, which my crystal ball tells me will happen sometime this coming winter. Then you can expect some real anger, and some real grief, maybe.
So far, it's all been a perfect illustration of what Chomsky calls "the Bounds of the Expressible". For what did we actually see and hear? Tears; some unusually loud wittering about "incompetence"; a couple of actual Bad Words; er... that's it. No one is seriously threatened.
If you can cite me someone who matters - i.e. a media person or a politician - actually saying "GWB is a disgrace to his office and should be impeached immediately", then I'll prepared to consider that some kind of minor media revolution might be taking place. Otherwise, not. It's just TV-as-usual.
Maybe you have, Len, but if not, you ought to post a link to the Friday morning radio interview with N.O. mayor: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...cas/
4209174.stm
Amazing stuff
Doug - yep, linked it a couple of posts down. But see China's post for a well-researched take-down of Mr Nagin, a life-long Republican whose sole qualification for office was that he had been President and General Manager of Cox Communications.
Here in the Great White North even a hackish cop lover like Christie Blatchford, writing in our national paper, the Globe and Mail (or Grope and Wail, if you prefer), noticed that the pattern of evacuation had something to do with race and class. For once I was actually able to finish an article written by her without wanting to retch.
She also makes a point that's worth keeping in mind, re: media coverage: all the media have spread rumours about violence, rapes and murder in the aftermath of the hurricane. They were slow to notice the violence of the fucked up relief effort. But the violence they reported were the same few incidents over and over. One of the two (yup, count 'em) white folks that were trapped in the convention centre talked about how well people were behaving considering the difficult circumstances. People have been improvising forms of organization - things like a medic station and body disposal.
In one poignant moment, a black woman told Blatchford 'with all due respect for your race, maam, I don't see any white faces down here."
Personally, I suspect that a lot of the supposed violence by citizens is really the result of two things: 1) "broken telephone" in the midst of a panic situation, where events become inflated well beyond what actually took place.
2) The endless repetition by the media of the same few events - because of laziness and the habitual perspective that people are animals and the government is doing its best.
These are just desperate people left without aid, infrastructure or even a whit of care for their well-being, trying to survive.
I don't think we can even imagine what the political implications of this disaster will be. I only hope the left is there.
Canadien,
Yeah, I tried to make that same point in one of my posts yesterday. The media are constructing this cinematic portrait of New Orleans Gone Feral based on like 3 specific incidents (at least one of which has been questioned) and a tremendous amount of vague innuendo and say-so from the cops and FEMA who stand hugely to gain from their claims that the streets are 'too dangerous' for relief efforts to get through. As opposed to their both being a) incredibly crap, and b) not nearly as concerned with relief efforts as property protection. I don't know how else to interpret the facts that they've been both preventing people leaving the city and preventing relief supplies getting in.
I just don't believe it's anywhere near as bad as they've claimed, not based on the evidence we've seen so far.
ARE YOU PINKOS CRAZY??? IT'S ANARCHY OUT THERE! GODDAM THESE HOOLIGANS AND SEND IN THE FUCKING MARINES!!
Sorry, I just thought I'd preempt any of the new dumbass trolls we're getting here...
"Reality Invades US Newsrooms. posted by lenin"
I don't know if you caught the end of C4 news this evening, but Jon Snow ended the problem by saying "very little of the criticism you have seen here tonight is making it on to the American media".
I have no doubt there was a brief few days when a few TV reporters let their hair down, but that's already over. I would also strongly dispute that the US media have allowed all the 'realities' of what was going on onto their TV screens.
"I don't think we can even imagine what the political implications of this disaster will be."
I've been wondering the same thing. You've got:
- An as-yet incalculable death toll;
- A major city effectively wiped out;
- An area the size of Britain rendered a disaster zone;
- Racism and political incompetence the focus of national and world attention;
- Major shocks to the US economy that will take the next 2 years to pan out, just in time for '08;
and fuck knows what else.
Question: are the political and social ramifications of Katrina genuinely impossible to predict, or will it be business as usual once the rebuilding begins?
I think there will be a great effort to create the impression of normality. Bear in mind that 'normality' under capitalism is an ideology, with no real referent. There is constant crisis, constant tragedy and friction - what matters is whether the illusion of 'normality' that sustains the extraordinarily unstable relations of capitalism will continue to have any purchase.
I think for more and more Americans, this will be the point at which they unplug from that illusion.
I think that's right. I think Bush's already falling ratings will pick up some serious lead from this fiasco. In particular the disaster in Iraq. The september 24 actions couldn't come at a better moment to ensure that an alternative interpretation gets a wide hearing.
It's interesting, I'm involved with organizing an international play reading, a la Lysistrata, just prior to Sept. 24 and everybody is directing the money raised towards anti-war organizations AND disaster relief. The connections are being made for explicit. (If you wanna know more, check out www.burythedead.ca)
Ahem, excuse the little plug there...
Hmm...dropped my name on that last comment. Strange. It was me.
It's unfortunate that Sen. Landrieu's anger on the particular point about the repair work on the 17th street levee was misplaced. I've read several reports to the effect that work was stopped because the repairs were finished for the moment. Apparently the repair workers left some holes remaining so that water from the city could drain back into the lake, as the water level in the lake was now below that in the city. Once the two were level, then they would go back in to fill in the last bits. Sorry, I don't have links to provide on this point: I've read too much on the web about the disaster to recall where I saw this.
She should have complained about other things, such as the fact that qualified volunteers were turned away by FEMA, that an offer of rescue workers and supplies by Mayor Daley of Chicago was refused by FEMA (offer made the day before Katrina made landfall), that it took four days (from last Sunday to Thursday) to for the Feds to approve sending national guard troops from New Mexico to Louisiana (offer made by Gov. Richardson of NM to Gov. Blanco of LA---who promptly accepted---on Sunday), and bunch of other screw-ups. Here is a a laundry list of the same
rhotic |?r??t?k| adjective Phonetics of, relating to, or denoting a dialect or variety of English, e.g., Midwestern American English, in which r is pronounced before a consonant (as in hard) and at the ends of words (as in far).
you Lenin, probably have rhoticity. I do not, because I come from South-Eastern England. The American South traditionally is non-rhotic, though there has been a considerable shift towards 'standard Mid-Western', rhotic English in the South in recent years, which Landrieu, unlike any flood victim I've heard in the media, demonstrates.
I don't know -- she seems caught between both accents. It's not clear.
As someone from Boston, I have some inkling of this sort of thing and how to listen for it. But both rhoticity and non-rhoticity creep in, at least in this interview.
And, yes, I realize this is a diversion, but it's moderately interesting -- though I'm not sure of what it means insofar as Sen. Landrieu's qualifications -- she is born and bred in NOLA; it's not as she's a transplant or a carpetbagger; she's been in elective office since age 23 and probably has little experience outside of New Orleans...see her father's biography for more...
What I hear from her in the interview:
- "Up undah the roof..."
- Both "undah warder" and "undah water"
- "Prisonuhs" (again, sometimes "prisoners," sometimes "prisonuhs")
- "We understand wayah we live..."
- "Aftah this show airs..."
- "ever": prounounced rhotically sometimes, other times as "evah"
In my own experience, one's real accent comes out when dealing with one's own, or under duress. My sense is that at bottom, she's still non-rhotic. Everything else has been picked up along the way, in different houses of Being.
I don't know -- she seems caught between both accents. It's not clear.
As someone from Boston, I have some inkling of this sort of thing and how to listen for it. But both rhoticity and non-rhoticity creep in, at least in this interview.
And, yes, I realize this is a diversion, but it's moderately interesting -- though I'm not sure of what it means insofar as Sen. Landrieu's qualifications -- she is born and bred in NOLA; it's not as she's a transplant or a carpetbagger; she's been in elective office since age 23 and probably has little experience outside of New Orleans...see her father's biography for more...
What I hear from her in the interview:
- "Up undah the roof..."
- Both "undah warder" and "undah water"
- "Prisonuhs" (again, sometimes "prisoners," sometimes "prisonuhs")
- "We understand wayah we live..."
- "Aftah this show airs..."
- "ever": prounounced rhotically sometimes, other times as "evah"
In my own experience, one's real accent comes out when dealing with one's own, or under duress. My sense is that at bottom, she's still non-rhotic. Everything else has been picked up along the way, in different houses of Being.
that's cool - looks like we have linguistic evidence that fuckstick Landrieu's façade is cracking.
that 'warder' for 'water' one is partcularly funny - is she sticking additional Rs in words out of stress? or pretnesion?
btw, Wikipedia says she was born in VA, not LA.
She was born in VA because her father was serving in the Army at that time. But that family has been in New Orleans politics forever. Strong connections with any and all institutions there, good and bad.
"Warder" for "water," "Warshington" for "Washington" -- the joys of hypercorrection. Common in parts of Pennsylvania and the Baltimore/DC corridor, as well as parts of the midwest and lower Miss. delta regions (strictly from personal observation; no documentation at hand).
Also, primarily a class phenomenon, although James A. Baker III, former Secretary of State, was a fan of the "Warshington DC" pronounication in his more aw-shucks moments. I'm sure the Exalted Leader himself might have employed it now and again.
Thanks for the links to http://www.crooksandliars.com , China. I hadn't checked out that site before yesterday, and all its video feeds and excerpts are great. (Tip - get broadband, it's worth it folks!)
Yes. I liked Scheiffer's metaphor, of the government and its minions being "like a dog watching television", all pricked ears, no comprehension!
My analysis?? Rats leaving sinking ship. Rats = previously right-wing-amenable/careerist journalists. Sinking ship = George W. Bush.
Gaia's revenge on him!! HUMILIATION.
The rest, the poor, they get to die, which is the unfortunate side-effect. Yeah, but to a BUSH, public humiliation is probably worse than death.
And think - NO MORE BUSH!! (Pity he can't be recalled, rather than impeached - but my webbrowsings have told me that's impossible under the American constitution. Well - impeach him then, Americans!)
10,000 dead are rather worse than a stain on a blue dress, no?
But - wouldn't it have been worth it to lose 1930s Munich (and 10,000 Munich lives, let's say - to get rid of Hitler, and thereby save ALL the people he was going to kill later?)
Mark, BTW, is Senator Landrieu REALLY 50? She looks like a child! I almost said that she looks too young to be a senator!!
(Well, if we aren't confusing images here - I guess I'm not the only one who looks younger than their age! It's very annoying when you really ARE that age! But it helps when you get older. I WOULDN'T want to be taken for 21 when I was 50, though!! Not as a politician!!)
Varshava, my Polish friend (excuse me for spelling your name phonetically, I just wanted to show that I know a bit of your language, through my mother's side!!)
I don't think you've yet realised the MASSIVE IMPORT of this situation. China has, I believe, hence his excellently informative postings. IT IS A MEDIA PARADIGM SHIFT.
The rats haven't yet confessed that they ARE rats and have been so wrong about "the status quo", but they ARE leaving the sinking ship, or its figurehead, namely, G. W. Bush.
BionOc, you're right, that they ARE exaggerating the situation as "an excuse" not to "go in", and news items on German TV have shown that too. Log on to www.zdf.de It DOES help to understand German, but the English-language speech is still often discernible under the German narration.
liz - I wrote that bloody post, thank me damn you!!
The BBC put togeather extracts from how things were covered in the US. Yes it was horrific. But there was one huge contrast. On the BBC they had interviews with the victims of this analysing the situation, talking about class, about race, about their analyses of why all this was happening (particularly striking was a young black woman talking about how they were all service sector workers not 'underclass'. This on that motorway bridge. Then a white woman from Mississipi talking about how 'rich folks just laugh at us').
On the US media all you saw was people being emotional, sometimes expressing their rage: but analyses was left to talking heads. I think this contrast tells you a lot.
I finally got around to watching those videos. Outrageous. Just fucking outrageous. But NOT unbelievable. They should be compulsory viewing.
Six days. People dying, bodies left to rot, the help kept out and the people kept in. The Bush Gang was demonstrably guilty of premeditated mass murder in New Orleans. They are not above murdering their own population. That's proven. They did it in plain sight. There's your compelling proof, Lenin. There it is on video.
And the fucking Democratic Party was an accessory to it.
The task for the left is clear: those bastards have to be tried for murder at the earliest opportunity. The truth about 9/11, whatever it exactly is, would come out in the same trial.
Thousands of people - including one of the few honourable Democrats, Cynthia McKinney - have now been pointing out for years that if the Bush Gang got away with 9/11 then they could get away with anything. Those people were laughed at, threatened and vilified. Then the Bush Gang got away with Iraq. Now they're getting away with New Orleans. (Oh yes they are.)
What will we let them get away with next?
WORK FOR THE IMPEACHMENT OF THE BUSH GANG.
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