Slate Gets Hammered For Tweeting ‘Houston Doesn’t Showcase “America at Its Best”‘

Joseph A. WulfsohnAug 29th, 2017, 11:00 pm
 

Slate is being slammed for a tweet that undercuts the American spirit in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

On Tuesday night, Slate tweeted the following:

 

In the column written by Katy Waldman, she claims that pointing out such moments of heroism and optimism paints the country as “mythic,” something she says isn’t real.

She continues:

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. 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.

Well, her explanation wasn’t good enough to calm the Twitter reaction.

The tweet has since been deleted. It apparently didn’t showcase Slate at its best.

UPDATE (11:13PM): Slate made a second attempt at sharing Waldman’s column with a less offensive tweet.

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