That's right. The number one result for a search on "
Hurricane Katrina Timeline" is in the dKosopedia.
It's been said before, and will be said again, but we have one hell of a loudspeaker here, folks. So what should we do?
Keep the facts coming. As painful as the pictures are, don't look away.
As angry as you may be, as much as you may want to write the best rant on the face of the planet, make sure you take the time to get the facts right.
And if you find something new, make sure you add it to the Hurricane Katrina Timeline in the dKosopedia.
It is already the most linked Katrina. We can keep it that way. Make it preeminent. Make sure every god-damned freeper who runs a search on those keywords, looking for their own twisted version of reality encounters nothing but cold hard truth.
But, see.
We have a problem. While the number 1 hit for plain old "hurricane Katrina" is the overwhelmingly neutral National Weather Service, and the number two result is the Red Cross, the number 3 hit is Wikipedia.
That's right, Wikipedia.
And this is a problem, you say. Wikipedia, the arbiter of fairness, the open-source fact factory, the ultimate grandparent of our own dKosopedia--we should worry because Wikipedia is the number three hit on Google?
No. Not at all.
Rather, we should, perhaps, be concerned that the number 3 hit, and the most informative, on Google, contains sentences like:
It's important to recognize the lack of planning by the city and state despite their own admission that they had complained to the Federal government that levee's needed to be upgraded. As reported in the local paper on July 24, the Mayor, Ray Nagin, was working on a presentation letting the city's citizens know that should a major hurricane come their way that they would be left on their own.
And:
As the hurricane approached landfall near New Orleans, and after several Federal agencies begged for him to do so, Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly placed the city under a mandatory evacuation order.
This is Wikipedia, we're talking about. It's supposed to be apolitical, no?
Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds to me like someone has been happily hacking right-wing sputum into the public spitoon at the Wikipedia. The thought makes me sick.
So here's your challenge, should you choose to accept it. If you do any work at Wikipedia, have a log-in name, and are comfortable editing for factuality--remember, Wikipedia is supposed to be apolitical, so should address all government failures, and not just the failures of the democratic Mayor--if, that is, you can write a fair and balanced report, or at least edit for truth...
Please, return the Wikipedia entry to a state of enlightened rationality. It's mostly there, but there is some rather unpleasant editorializing happening between the lines, and it has to come out.
I myself must off to bed. It's midnight here, and I have to be up by six in the AM to keep my unlovely underpaid uninsured job...but, please:
Keep truth on hand at all times. You never know when some poor fool will need it to set him free.
(And make sure you link to the Hurricane Katrina Timeline in the dKosopedia. We're in an undeclared propaganda war with Karl Rove. We need every weapon we can find. And though it may sound cynical to refer to a truthful timeline in this way, we have been handed one hell of slingshot. Don't drop it. Goliath is coming down.)