Katrina Coverage

Hilburn is the L.A. Times' pop music critic, and he discusses Kanye West's outburst in "The Show Didn't Benefit by Censors":
...NBC may have been nervous about West's comments, including the notion that America and its president are unresponsive to the needs of the poor. But you can be sure those remarks would have been cheered more than anything else in the program by the black parents and children still trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center and the Superdome if they had been able to hear them...
Because he is widely seen by critics and industry tastemakers as an influential spokesman for the American black experience, you could feel the strain of his attempt to fulfill that role - to step beyond the generic comments of other celebrities Friday to reflect on the horror being experienced by the flood victims...
[West:] "I hate the way they portray us in the media... If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."
...[West] seemed to be talking extemporaneously, so he might have chosen his words differently if he'd had time to write them down.
But maybe not...