With America experiencing its own Tsunami of sorts I wonder if those Emmis Communications Executives, Jeff Smulyan (CEO),  Rick Cummings (Radio Division Head), Barry Mayo (General Manager), and John Dimick( Program Director) at  Hot 97 a.k.a. WQHT in New York, still think their Tsunami Song is funny?

We realize that the staff were on air this week talking about how the Hurricane Katrina disaster is awful, what hindsight I might add. The names of those involved are known, but for ALL involved it was a premeditated move and carefully orchestrated. They thought the Tsunami song was funny. I won't call it Karma. But its interesting how tragedy knocking on one's door can make people see clearer.

The 2005 Asian Tsunami killed probably a a quarter of a million people. Hurricane Katrina will not reach that high but will probably take about twice as many lives as September 11th. If correct this would make it the nation’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which killed up to 6,000 people.

Barry Mayo have you seen New Orleans? No, you didn’t cause it's under water. Emmis boss, Rick Carlisle would you have played that song if Katrina happened before the Tsunami? Both disasters affected the poor people more than those with more money. Katrina victims are mostly black. Tsunami victims were mostly people of color, all different dark skin Asians. C'mon watching it you noticed in the footage that almost everyone is black. We realize the socioeconomic reasons for what we were seeing, but we waited for the journalists on the scene to address what to us was an obvious issue. Of course, no one really wants to discuss some of America’s more serious, deep-rooted problems like the reason (poverty)  the victims were even stuck in Katrina’s path. These victims situation truly mirrors that of the Asian Tsunami victims.

Play that Tsunami song again…the similarities are striking, you would not even have to change much. Truth is, if people had not protested you all might be making light of Hurricane Katrina. There is no reason to think it might be different. Well maybe not cause these are Americans - that, I guess, is the biggest difference.

The second biggest difference is probably that we knew this was coming with Katrina but the Tsunami caught us off guard. Yes, I said we knew it was coming. As Salon.com writer Sidney Blumenthal, pointed out, "In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war." Then Bush had the nerve to be on vacation until the 11th hour and Dick Cheney is still on vacation as of now!!!

There will be more of these disasters because Katrina’s real name is Global Warming, and American gluttony is oblivious to that. Author Ross Gelbspan of  "The Heat Is On” and ‘’Boiling Point” breaks it down like this, "In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet when President George W. Bush was elected president — and subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies. As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change." Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about global warming stands out as an indictment of the US media. When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather.

For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations. Today, with the science having become even more robust — and the impacts as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of Mexico — the press,  along with the oil and coal industries, bares a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction.

As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will — like last winter — be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the beginning of 2005, a deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands of people in New England and dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston. The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is global warming."

Instead those who feel abandoned are growing more bitter each day. With all this analysis, all the corporate media talks about is Black people "looting" food and white people who "find" food. The emphasis is to protect the property as opposed to rescue the people. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said she was “furious” about the looting. “What angers me the most is disasters tend to bring out the best in everybody, and that’s what we expected to see,” Ms. Blanco said at a news conference.” Her emphasis is to stop “looting” and she can't understand the people who are suffering. It's crazy almost funny, that is all they see. Many Blacks see this whole situation differently from the corporate media and whites in America, we even wonder why the news jocks call people in their own city and state "refugees". It's appears racially charged and it is. But saying funny in a commentary that talks about Hot-97 and Tsunami probably is in poor taste. - Nuff Said.

Released: September 1st, 2005

The views and opinions expressed herein by the author do not necessarily represent the opinions or position of Playahata.com.