This is going to be news to some of you, but the world has not stopped. Things keep happening, all over the country and the world, despite the hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast. Katrina is an enormous disaster - hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives lost and tens of billions in damage. The area hardest hit will be changed for a generation or more. It's clearly the most important thing going on right now.
But it's not the only thing going on right now, and I'm getting really sick and tired of people insisting that it is, and that we can't discuss anything else.
Far be it from me to defend Fox news, but a poster in another thread just jumped on them for carrying a story that wasn't about Katrina. Give me a break. There are other things happening in the world - and censoring anybody who dares pay attention to them is just beyond the pale.
If you find yourself unable to care about or pay attention to anything but Katrina right now, that's fine. It's understandable. I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way. But we all deal with disaster in different ways. Asking the rest of us to shut out the rest of the world and shut up about every other issue or story isn't helping anybody. If it helps you to focus on nothing else, do that. Don't expect the whole world to wait for your approval to start noticing anything else, or commenting on it.