STARKVILLE —
Not since comedian and later telethon impresario Jerry Lewis uttered his lowbrow slur of our state in 1968 has television stirred such a reaction in Mississippi as did the good folks at the Weather Channel in describing the possible landfall destination of Hurricane Isaac as the “land mass between New Orleans and Mobile.”
Not Mississippi, mind you, but “the land mass between New Orleans and Mobile.” It was as if Mississippi isn’t worthy even to be named and that land mass inhabitants, not Mississippians, were in the crosshairs of the storm.
Forget that the storm arrived seven years to the day since Hurricane Katrina slammed Mississippi and left the devastation of the largest natural disaster in history behind for Mississippians to confront. Forget that Mississippi has been the landfall destination of other killer hurricanes like Camille before Katrina. Forget that the western end of the Mississippi Gulf Coast is still ragged from Katrina.
Back in 1968, Jerry Lewis told a “joke” on The Tonight Show as a guest host for Johnny Carson. Lewis recounted in the “joke” how he’d realized a lifelong dream by “using the bathroom while flying over Mississippi.” The next night, Lewis made an on-air apology — but his career took a hit in the South generally and in Mississippi in particular as movie theaters here refused to screen his films.
Clearly, repeated incidents of racial violence in Mississippi in the mid-1960s contributed to Lewis deciding that kind of “joke” was permissible for a national television audience. Some moderate Mississippians even suggested in that day that the wounds from the Jerry Lewis slur were in great measure self-inflicted.
But there was nothing at all self-inflicted about this current flap. The Weather Channel anchor’s on-air flub of identifying “the land mass between New Orleans and Mobile” as a sufficient name for what the rest of us call Mississippi was for many on the Gulf Coast a reminder of a common complaint expressed during and after Katrina in 2005 — that the national media concentrated their coverage on New Orleans rather than on Mississippians similarly situated.
Mississippians took pride in the resilience of our people during and after Katrina. Mississippians also took pride in what they believed was a superior response to the crisis from state and local governments here as opposed to that experienced in Louisiana.
Social media exploded as Mississippians vented over the “land mass” slight on The Weather Channel as Isaac approached. The state’s media picked up on the sentiment and Mississippians actually used the perceived slight as a rallying point from which to make preparations to ride out Isaac and to get ready to help family, friends, and strangers impacted by the storms.
To be frank, The Weather Channel for me is a cross between a cheap cure for insomnia and background noise when working on my taxes. People who follow the weather to the point of obsession make me a bit nervous.
But this “land mass” is home and I love it. Perhaps our energies would be best used not in beating The Weather Channel over the head, but in pooling our resources through the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, our churches and synagogues, and as individuals to help those who are now victims of Isaac.
Go to http://www.msema.org and click on the “To Donate Money or Items” button. That will give a list of civic, religious and first responder organizations that can use your donations to help your fellow Mississippians weather this storm and the aftermath. Good luck out there on our “land mass.”
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)
Opinion
This ‘land mass’ survives again, both storm and reporters’ slurs
- Opinion
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
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When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
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