10/22/06

Apocalypse Now


i've mostly wanted this to be a blog about my pictures, which it will continue to be, assuming i can figure out a direction, and a way to accomplish my vision. which at present i lack. it's true, i'm a lot like bush. you wouldn't want me for president.

but it's probably clear from captions to previous posts that i'm politically aware, if not biased. although i'm not sure bias applies when when you are sick to your core, and just railing against the machine in anyway you can.

america, finally seemed to wake up a bit after katrina. at least katrina whopped her up side the head real good and made her take a good look at what the fuckwitted president was really like. a shallow, spoiled, man child, way out of his depth when real, and immediate crisis struck.

mostly that seems to be forgotten at this point, to tell the truth i rarely think of it. it's not just a disaster in iraq, we've a disaster in our own back yard, and yet this ill conceived war we we were lied into has subsumed everything. well, here's a little story about a photographer doing his job and not quite being able to cope. via DK reader at TPM

Katrina has become a post-apocalyptic American nightmare for those living in the disaster zone, or dying there, or neither living nor dying but stumbling through the carnage like zombies.
snip
The personal toll on those covering the storm and its aftermath has been too little documented. The Times-Pic, whose main office was flooded in the storm, forcing its temporary evacuation, has faced challenges that no modern American newspaper has ever endured. A few weeks ago, one its photographers attempted suicide by cop. Fortunately for all involved, he was well-known and respected by the police, and they showed a level of restraint that was heroic, even as he tried to provoke them into killing him by using his car as a weapon.


heckuva a job, heckuva a job. check out guitar george, he knows all the chords...

link to the original article by Chris Rose.

2 comments:

Eli said...

a shallow, spoiled, man child, way out of his depth when real, and immediate crisis struck.

Not so much out of his depth (although he certainly is that), so much as completely disengaged. There are a handful of things that interest him, mostly involving money and blood, and the plight of a bunch of poor and/or black people in NOLA just wasn't that big a deal to him.

I think it took him at least 2-3 days just to understand what all the fuss was about, and even then, what action he took was reluctant, like a little kid forced to do an unpleasant chore, and sullenly dragging his feet.

charley said...

well, depth refered to the floods.

man, i was really drunk when i wrote this. not such a great writer, but i was really pissed when i realized he's done jack squat to improve this nation.

in fact he has damaged this nations psyche and soul. he's not really responsible for katrina any more than 9/11 (actually i think he was kind of lay'n down on the job on 9/11), but he is responsible for the response, which was poor.