Aftermath: The Poverty Angle

A big story emerged from the aftermath, Jonathan Storm writes: Television “opened eyes and held them open to the chasm that separates the poor from mainstream America.”

“I think everybody knew that all along,” former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young told Josh Mankiewicz on NBC’s Dateline Monday. “I think we just didn’t see it on television in such a concentrated way.”

All the references to a “third world country” on the Gulf Coast ignored the reality of poverty in America, UVA professor Rosa Brooks writes in the LA Times. “Maybe this time around, the media won’t forget about the poor quite so quickly,” she says.

> CNN’s Rick Sanchez on Showbiz Tonight: “Reporters need to be very careful with on this story — and oftentimes it’s because we come from an socio background that’s very different from many of the people we’re covering…”

> As Wolf Blitzer says: “So poor…and so black.”