I’ve found the New Orleans coverage gripping, not due to the disaster, which feels familiar, but because of the illumination, which seems rare.

It’s had a sort of “pull back the curtain” quality. Suddenly you see inside, where you’re not supposed to. Or, as in a theatre, the curtain rises too soon, showing the stagehands. Such moments happen when the news media get out of control, in a situation out of control. It happened on 9/11, but briefly. For most of that day, you didn’t feel your responses were being managed. But, by day’s end, the scripts were back in operation, the curtain had descended over the unruly elements. The President was firmly back in control etc.

In New Orleans, they keep trying to get back to a script but have so far failed. Each day, the curtain is unexpectedly pulled back anew, revealing more corpses, ineptitude, farcical euphemism and egomania. Revealing some context, too — the backdrops, as it were. All the mainstream media are now talking about what they keep insisting no one will mention: the race and class elements in who got hammered. Suddenly, it’s not taboo.

I hope this pullback effect isn’t just about the pleasure of having one’s prejudices confirmed. We all start out with expectations and preliminary judgments on such events. But I’d like to think that new information can cause us to refine our views, change or maybe dump them.

What, for instance, was there new to learn during this catastrophe? Well, take the media, which I always expect to be supine and compliant. They’ve been damn good. Media critics on the margins have been reduced to whining, “What took you so long?” Another pretty face, like CNN’s Anderson Cooper, has been a terrier, night after night. Maybe he was once a bright guy who loved reporting, before they made him a star. Can it be they’re not all just craven lackeys who sold their souls for a close-up? Or can it be that the ideological straitjacket on U.S. mainstream media is somehow weakening?

Speaking of ideology, I want to argue with Doug Saunders’s erudite Globe column that examined the New Orleans breakdown in the light of U.S. “group psychology, in which faith in individual fortune replaces the fixed social roles that keep other places aloft during crises.” An individualistic mindset is often seen as pervasive, like religion, in the U.S. But many polls suggest it’s not so. A recent survey showed big majorities of Democrats and Republicans favour cuts in defence spending, increases to education, and a rollback of tax cuts for the rich. Another found a large majority supports participation in Kyoto.

In other words, that U.S. mass psychology is not so mass, even if it is in command. It belongs mostly to the rich and powerful. Real public opinion is similar to elsewhere. The difference is, in the U.S., those widespread attitudes are rarely reflected in public discourse, the media or electoral options. So what failed in New Orleans was not mass psychology but elite ideology. And the people who got shafted may be less disillusioned than just disgusted.

Doug Saunders added that “U.S. thinkers” are looking back to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 to understand this disaster. Local victims may look nearer, to the Mississippi flood of 1927. It left 700,000 poor blacks homeless. Then, too, people tried to respond, through their invention, the blues. A record firm asked blues singers to visit and offered $500 for the best blues on the flood. Bessie Smith won with Back Water Blues: It thundered and it lightened and the winds began to blow/ There was a thousand women, didn’t have no place to go/ Hmm, I can’t live there no more/ Hmm, I can’t live there no more/ And there ain’t no place for a poor old girl to go.

People always try to understand, to place disaster in some light. Another victim this week moaned the blues, over the New Orleans football team planning to play in Texas. “They’ve pulled out. That’s like kicking us when we’re down.” (Hmm.) I don’t deride his complaint. He may be one of many Americans who yearn for a stronger social fabric and less individualistic hooey. But, in the meantime, you use what you can to get you through.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.