So, it takes OPRAH to get reporters to stop calling them "refugees"?

[gauguin57]

I swear ... I suddenly hear reporters correcting themselves (a la "refugees ... er ... excuse me ... survivors (or evacuees)") since Oprah told the nation to "stop calling them refugees. They are Americans; they are living in America."

I'm not an Oprah fan at all, but maybe SHE should have run this fiasco instead of FEMA. I have no doubt her "angel network" could have done a better job, and told the country the truth from the get-go.

Her show yesterday -- with Dr. Oz (an "Oprah" regular and a member of Clinton's heart-surgery team) showing all the dead bodies lying uncovered on the highways, etc.; showing (up close and personal) the specific medical conditions that were killing individuals; and talking about the barely-alive people left in the airport morgue to die alone -- was absolutely killer.

[Connie_Corleone]

1. Me too. I noticed that too.

I would say you're right about Oprah.

[jobycom]

2. Calling them refugees allows the feds to dehumanize them

They turn the victims into government-speak, into clean terms that sound more like a category than a person.

Oprah is helping to reverse that, to make the dead faces real faces.

[gauguin57]

3. "Dead faces real faces" is right.

That Dr. Oz went right up to the corpses, pulled back their blankets and talked about what they died of. He put chairs around corpses in the streets to keep them from being run over. In extreme closeup, he showed how the medical staff in the airport were trying to do basic medical procedures under unthinkable conditions.

Oz talked to people who had written their names on their arms with magic markers, so they could be ID'd if they died.

A real unblinking look at the most grisly parts of this tragedy.

I think it was very effective, too, how Oprah went into the Superdome and showed how dark it was. You can imagine how gangs could just take over in a huge place that was pitch dark, with little security to stop it.

The NOLA police chief sobbing in Oprah's car was very profound, too. One of his officers had just killed himself. Eighty percent of the police officers are homeless themselves. God.