Ethnic Double Standards

Here’s a report I received from Middle America yesterday:

“Up here in North Dakota we just recovered from a historic event-may I even say a “weather event of biblical proportions”-with a historic blizzard of up to 44″ of snow and winds to 90 mph that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to tens of thousands.

FYI:

Obama did nothing.
FEMA did not come.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our mayors did not blame Obama or anyone else.
Our governor did not blame Obama or anyone else either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC did not visit-or even report on this category 5 snowstorm.

Nobody demanded $2000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA trailer house.
No one looted.
Nobody-I mean nobody-demanded that the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything either.
No Larry King, no Bill O’Reilly, No Oprah, no Chris Mathews and no Geraldo Rivera.
No Sean Penn, no Barbara Streisand, no Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUVs to pluck people out of snow-engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food and the fire and police departments delivered it to snowbound families.
Families took in the stranded people-total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, brought out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is “Work or die.”

. . .

The world does NOT owe you a living.”

End of transmission. But what about this ultra-hypocritical treatment by the government and our vaunted “free and unbiased” press? Are we too self-conscious about the gap between the handling of the big hurricane in New Orleans and the handling by these self-sufficient Middle America folks of their big disaster, and how it might put some people to shame?

Or is it deeper than that? These North Dakotans are a bunch of Scandinavians, Germans, Poles and whatever, and there are some pretty hefty indications that this segment of the population is being marginalized. Please, folks, let’s not abandon discrimination against some groups in our society only to practice it against some others.

(Speaking of ethnic identities up there, I do recall that when Eugene McCarthy substituted for the governor at a Swedish festival in Minnesota he apologized that Governor Anderson was unable to make it. Then he assured his audience that, since he had a Swedish dentist, he was of Swedish extraction.  To their credit, they didn’t lynch him.)

Oh, by the way, maybe the lack of press coverage was due in part to the fact that this calamity was not exactly supportive of the global warming hoax.