Are we tired of Danny Westneat?

After starting with an interesting question, The Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat concludes with his usual lazy standby explanation based on white guilt


Westneat asks if we are burned out on charitable giving after a year of several large natural (semi-natural in the case of New Orleans) disasters. As evidence, he points out our lack of response to suffering in Pakistan in the wake of a massive earthquake there.

Of course, according to Westneat, we are not giving more for earthquake relief to Pakistan because the people there have black hair and eyes. It’s too bad our region’s flagship newspaper gives newsprint space to someone that can tease us by asking a relevant question, then fall back on such a silly and all-to-predictable explanation straight out of the Political Correctness for Dummies handbook.

It’s obvious the guy has not spent much time out in the world. The extent of his “diversity culturalization” is listening to NPR while driving to a foreign land, like perhaps Kent. Anyone who has spent substantial time in one of these perpetually impoverished countries realizes that throwing money at the latest disaster does little to help. It might make white boys like Westneat, who seem to have some sort of unresolved guilt, feel better about themselves, but that’s sort of like Don Quixote challenging windmills to protect the honor of his maiden. There isn’t much wider benefit in the self indulgent exercise.

While CNN uses dramatized portrayals of the latest disaster in an effort to boost ratings, most of us have caught on to the fact that CNN simply needs to maintain bureaus in a predictable set of countries to find content. The countries themselves are perpetual disasters.

Instead of concluding that we are simply fat, consumption addicted, racist white people who care not about the rest of the world, it would be much more interesting for someone with newsprint space to examine honestly why we are sometimes slow to give. What are our perceptions are of places like Pakistan, for example? It could just be that we are getting better at choosing and prioritizing our charity so that we are not constantly chasing hopeless cases.

Or, someone like Westneat could appeal to our logic. It could be that we are getting worse at choosing where to send our charity because we are not factoring in long term interests. Pakistan is a great example where appealing to our intellect and logic might be the best way to inspire us to give. After all, you can be sure that Islamic fascist organizations are using the occasion to blame Western influence for inspiring God's wrath, while giving money with religious indoctrination attached. Help from us, with some PR attached, might be some of the best spent charity in a year that has required a lot of it.

Yeah, we are tired of Westneat. Let’s get someone in our media that appeals to something more than his own feel-good (and make us feel bad) impulses.