Liberal website Slate has been hammered for a tweet it sent that diminished the heroism of people helping victims of Hurricane Harvey.
“Houston doesn’t showcase America at its best,'” the headline read in a tweet sent on Tuesday.
Writer Katy Waldman argued that the heroism shown by rescuers in Houston were not symbolic of the actual state of relations in America.
“The flood, the animals: It all felt so mythic,” she wrote. “In coverage of Harvey, the word hero is almost as ubiquitous as the stills of intrepid reporters, their rain slickers swirling like capes, and hunky National Guardsmen in life jackets. During a speech to the press on Monday, President Donald Trump noted that crisis showcases ‘the best in America’s character—strength, charity, and resilience.’ (This was a reprieve from his popcorn-gobbling tweets about Harvey’s unprecedented, riveting destruction.) The Washington Times echoed Trump with a piece spotlighting the many Clark Kents and Diana Princes vaulting into action: ‘Hurricane Harvey Brings Out the Best in America.’ There is an adage that ‘adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.'”
And this story revealed Waldman’s character, as she cited a book by author Rebecca Solnit that “argues that emergencies provoke from us a conditional virtue. They create provisional utopias, communities in which the usual—selfish, capitalistic—rules don’t apply. ‘Imagine a society,’ Solnit writes, ‘where the fate that faces [people], no matter how grim, is far less so for being shared, where much once considered impossible, both good and bad, is now possible or present, and where the moment is so pressing that old complaints and worries fall away, where people feel important, purposeful, at the center of the world.'”
“The point here is obviously not to diminish the bighearted men and women who rose to the occasion when Harvey, a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ storm with a spiraling death toll, slammed into Texas,” she wrote, before diminishing what they did. “But it is misleading to characterize Houston as an exhibition of the “best of America” when what it represents is a contingent America, a “paradise” specific to the “hell” around it. These waterlogged suburbs have become zones of exemption, where norms hang suspended and something lovelier and more communal has been allowed to flourish in their place. Disaster scientists have repeatedly punctured the myth, perpetuated by Hollywood and the media, that cataclysm awakens our worst selves. Rather, disruptive events loosen our mores just enough to permit new kinds of compassion.”
Waldmn and Slate were roundly burned on social media for their insensitivity and replaced the tweet with a new one it, apparently, thought made them look better.
Note: We have replaced our earlier tweet to better capture the spirit of this article. We hope you’ll read it: https://t.co/BGYbTvnXv0
— Slate (@Slate) August 30, 2017
But that didn’t stop the barrage of anger.
This is one of the stupidest things ever written, & I’m sorry I read it, other than I get to reply that the writer DOES NOT KNOW HOUSTON.
— Martha Griffin (@LoneStarSchools) August 30, 2017
Houston Police Sgt. Steve Perez drowned today. He was “America at its best.” Posting this vile piece as his family mourns is unconscionable
— Tom Sileo (@TSileo) August 30, 2017
It’s back! The SlatePitch is back! pic.twitter.com/RbFVe7Y8N6
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 30, 2017
Peak Slate: Unable to give praise to a state in the middle of a natural disaster because they don’t vote the way Slate wants them to. https://t.co/WVzmBEL9BQ
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) August 30, 2017
Here is your daily reminder that @Slate isn’t just garbage, but is an outright affront to common human decency. https://t.co/lJm57GqaU3
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) August 30, 2017
.@Slate may actually be a trick publication for @GOP. They honestly couldn’t do more for Republicans if they tried. https://t.co/Lp2Q9X79l3
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 30, 2017
Coming soon from Slate: We never saw another Trump term coming pic.twitter.com/sKSVo3OTbG
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) August 30, 2017
Yes, actually it does. Slate is only running this piece to gain attention by those outraged. It’s the last move of a dying website. https://t.co/XFNz1cGuBg
— Nick Short ?? (@PoliticalShort) August 30, 2017
Who hurt you, Slate? pic.twitter.com/5y5B11eOf1
— Cameron Gray (@Cameron_Gray) August 30, 2017
“Dont leave! We have a journalist from Slate who will give her views on Houston, you dont wanna miss it!” pic.twitter.com/QJoBTVxq84
— ??Nightwood ✞⚭⚓ (@Shteina_Gott) August 30, 2017
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