Is anyone able to provide a link to rebutt Christopher Hitchens Racist

[KoKo]

Comment. I remember an article linked here that the NO's Police swam through the filthy water with handcuffs in their hands to rescue the prisoners from New Orleans so they wouldn't escape. I remember the photos of all those prisoners who were together on a bridge in NO's.

Was it an interview with Governor Blanco's daughter maybe when she had to cancel her trip to NO to meet with Bush?

Does anyone have a link because I want to send this to Media Matters to debunk what Hitchens said.

Thanks if anyone has any info on this:

Here's Hitchens comment in an interview with the Austrailian Press:

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TONY JONES: I was going to...that's one of the key points. This exposure of what is obviously a very large underclass in New Orleans and across the south, what is that going to mean? I mean, the people who've been left behind here, those without cars, the sick, the infirm, the handicapped, the ill-informed, the ignorant, most of them black - how are Americans going to come to terms with what's happened here?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: And I think you might have to add also the criminal element. I haven't been able to confirm this, but I was told they just opened the jails and let people out. Because they didn't know what to do and the police department started to throw up its hands and buckle quite quickly. People actually deserted in the middle of the calamity. And if it's true that the criminal population was just released on to the streets then that's an additional inflection on the people who were remaining behind. It's like turning the wolves onto the sheep.

TONY JONES: How will America come to terms, do you think, with this, though, this racial element which Jesse Jackson has jumped upon so quickly. We've heard this rapper who made the public comments on network television which were censored from one coast to the other. It's obviously extremely sensitive, not many people have made these comments, but those who have have got an awful lot of publicity.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, yes. I mean, I don't think the Reverend Jackson's opinions are now taken as seriously as they once were. But, look, the thought is bound to occur to people naturally, you don't have to do any prompting let alone any incitement. I mean there it is, the revelation that a lot Americans live in effect in the Third World - and in a banana republic version of it too - and right within our borders. That's quite extraordinary. I forget who it was who said that if you looked at a lot of this screen footage and you didn't know where it was, you would have had to assume that it was perhaps in the Caribbean or in Somalia.


http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1453763.htm

[Wordie]

1. I don't think those were racist comments...especially that last part...

about poor people in the South living in what is a third world country within our borders. If more people understood what was going on, maybe things could start to improve. His comments promote people actually taking a look at the plight of the poor (especially blacks) in the south.

I don't really like Hitchens, but this wasn't necessesarily racist, imho.

[KoKo]

2. He's blaming New Orleans police for releasing Criminal Element into the

city. Did you read the whole article not just what I could snip. His claim is wrong about the "criminal element." I just can't find a link.

[Wordie]

4. The entire article is actually well thought-out and shows Bush negligence

and indifference toward the people of the region.

I think you may have mis-read his comments, Koko.

[CordellHull]

3. I must confess . . .

. . . That I fail to see how the comment is racist.