femminista: thoughts of a feminist rhetorician

So many things have horrified me lately, I almost don't know where to begin, but I'll start with the small text box article on page A22 of today's NY Times. In this article, Barbara Bush is quoted as saying "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas." What exactly is scary about that, Barbara? What happened to compassionate conservative? She goes on to make what is perhaps the most insensitive comment that I have ever heard. "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." In what warped reality, does losing contact with family members; seeing dead bodies floating in flood waters and lying by the road and in shelters; spending a week or more without adequate food and water, unsure of your fate, fearful for your safety and surrounded by filth and human waste; being carted off by buses to wherever there was room; having your entire life uprooted, separated from friends and family and for many, from the only life you have ever known; in what reality is this better off? Spoken like a person who believes that money is the most important thing, Barbara shows her ignorance of the realities of this disaster.

To read the entire article: Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off which also contains a short mp3 file of her comment or to listen to the NPR "Marketplace" raw tape of the conversation: Barbara speaks You'll need RealPlayer to listen to the audio file on the NPR page.