An Acehnese Child
There Are No Words

Irritable People

This morning I'm finding that some of the more interesting tsunami-related blog readings are the posts of irritable people, people losing their cool over how others are reacting to the tsunami. Here are a couple of examples.

This young lady is having a hard time with small talk because everything seems so insignificant in the face of disaster. She gets a bit lost in a selfabsorbed hall of mirrors thinking about this and then wonders if she might be a shallow person. I think she's too hard on herself. Her first post on the tsunami, about being in a boat in the South China Sea at the time of the earthquake, is also worth reading.

A guy named George at Exile seems to have been watching too much CNN which is simultaneously making him feel helpless and upset. He's decided that this kind of TV is a form of pornography: tsunami porn. Interestingly the theme of voyeurism also emerged from an eye-witness account:

She lies there, brown and faceless, flies all over her. Am I a voyeur because I notice the swell of a breast on this pitiful form and know she was a woman? The earth mover lifts her gently but she slides off at the last moment because the nets she is tangled in pull her back. Happens twice then she slides into her grave.

The most gossipy of the bunch is The Diplomad, a group blog by Republican career Foreign Service Officers who seem to be trying to make the case (anonymously and giving few specifics about their own work) that the US is doing all the distaster relief while the UN sits on its hands. An interesting read, best served with a grain of salt. What I find most interesting is the emotional tone. Also, note that these collectively Foreign Service guys didn't think the disaster was worth mentioning until December 30th.

And finally there is the completely insane response that Josh Marshall notes from the The Ayn Rand Institute's David Holcberg who claims the US government shouldn't give any money for disaster relief.

UPDATE: Speaking of irritable people, since I don't usually read these blogs, I had completely missed the controversy over disaster tourism at Reason and Instapundit.

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