Poverty, race and class? Who knew!?
The media suddenly "discovers" racial and economic inequality...

Walking past a newstand last night, I noticed both Time and Newsweek ("Poverty, Race and Katrina") used closely-cropped images of unhappy black faces on their covers this week for stories on what went wrong in New Orleans.

On the one hand, it's a good thing that the media and the country as a whole are finally, in their own limited way, noticing that poor black people exist and that hell, maybe we should try to deal with poverty and racial discrimination. On the other, it's frustrating that they weren't paying attention before, and I can't help feeling they'll quickly lose interest and move on to something else. Bush's mention of racial discrimination in particular felt like lip service, especially since he framed it as a historical, not a current, problem. For a much more indepth analysis, see Jeanne's post over at This Modern World and Earl Ofari Hutchinson over at Alternet.

Update: Billmon over at the Whiskey Bar has a must-read post that relates to a lot of this, about Bush as the "Big Spender."