[Yuskevich]

Chemical Soldier,

Yes, suffering is suffering. The husband who lost is wife to Katrina will mourn as deeply as the husband who lost his wife to the tsunami, and I in no way mean to suggest that we owe the people of New Orleans and Mississippi any less help and compassion, simply because they had advanced warning and many were able to flee.

I guess that I am talking more about the way in which the story has been covered, than about the actual experiences of those directly affected by Katrina. Do I blame the mayor of Biloxi for making the original comparison? No, he is just trying to find words to express his sense of total devastation--and here I think that Jim in Middle GA had a good initial point. Do I blame a news outlet for trumpeting that quote as if the carnage inflicted by Katrrina was, in fact, as widespread and deadly as the tsunami? Yes, I do, and the person who commented on how news outlets in Chicago are proclaiming that a Katrina-related rise in gas prices was about to hit us all, as if that was in some way comparable to what the people of New Orleans and Biloxi are suffering, is just another example of how the news media (and if I were to change my original post, I would substitute "news media and some Americans" for "American people") makes no effort to establish a sense of proportion among the various events it covers. Every event, every problem, is the worst one ever. It makes it hard for people who rely on the media to get their information to understand what is going on.