When Is the Hollywood Fundraiser?

There was a letter to the editor in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune that sums up my feelings on the recent Midwestern flooding and the comparison to Hurricane Katrina. I've been wanting to write something on it for a while but haven't got around to it. Plus I'd probably say some mean things so I'll let this letter serve as my feelings:

Letter of the day: Disaster strikes, and Midwesterners get busy

"Where is Anderson Cooper? Where is Shepard Smith? Where are the major news networks? Where is Hollywood and why aren't they putting together a telethon to help the victims of the flooding? Where is Kanye West looking into the camera and saying George Bush hates black people?

There is historic flooding involving five Midwestern states; Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. Where are the news anchors reporting from the bridges asking where is the federal government and when are they coming to the rescue, as they did back during Hurricane Katrina?

The reason you don't see them is it doesn't fit the template. It doesn't fit the template that the federal government is supposed to be omnipresent in our lives and that self-reliance and self-responsibility are mere clichés of days long ago.

The suffering that is being endured by our fellow Midwesterners is no less than the suffering of those in Louisiana. The difference is our fellow Midwesterners are picking themselves off the ground, brushing themselves off, and getting to work. Their first instinct is not to blame government; their first instinct is to help each other out and try to put their lives back together."