America, America: After the government of Puerto Rico released its staggering official mortality figures from Hurricane Maria, showing at least 1,400 dead, following a Harvard study that estimated that anywhere from 800 to more than 8,000 people had perished in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, millions of Americans timidly stared at their televisions and waited for the inevitable and brutal reckoning.
“I was nervous about turning on my TV last week,” said Ethel, 46, “because I knew that the biggest national scandal would be the thousands of Americans who had died as a result of Hurricane Maria.” Ethel added that she had eventually turned the TV on, once, to check the weather, but instead Roseanne Barr was on the screen, which she assumed was just a quick break from a stream of debate, soul-searching and fact-finding by a grieving nation.
“I personally,” Dave, 51, who sits at a diner every day in the middle of the country waiting for reporters to come ask him what he thinks of President Trump, said, “believe it is important that if a woman who is on television says something racist or controversial, we discuss that thoroughly first, because that could be very distracting when we are trying as a nation to figure out what went wrong in Puerto Rico and to hold our leaders accountable. So it is good that we got that out of the way, I guess. Anyway, I’m ready now.”
“I was a little confused,” another viewer said, “and at first I thought Roseanne Barr was a metaphor, and I made a big drawing on my wall trying to guess what the symbolism was, but then I realized people were just actually talking about Roseanne. Which is good. I have opinions about Roseanne. I have no idea what to say in the wake of so much death and pain, and the realization that we could have acted sooner and saved people and we … didn’t.”
“I know we are going to confront this head-on and inquire about what went wrong?” Martha, 30, said, with a rising inflection. “We aren’t the kind of country that would let something like this happen and then just kind of try to act like it didn’t. Except for the last few months, when that was kind of what we did, but we’ve been in a weird place, and usually we aren’t.”
“I understand that we have a duty as a nation to respond in a proportional way whenever a television personality says something,” one viewer said, “and I do think that is an important discussion that should take at least three days, and then of course if Donald Trump does anything, he is the president, and that is news too, but I know that once we finish talking about those topics, the devastation in Puerto Rico will be the next thing. Also I think Kanye did something, so we should discuss that.”
Cornered in a green room, a television personality said that what had happened was a horrible shame and disgrace, and that we as a nation would have to take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves if this was truly who we wanted to be and what we wanted to see on our televisions. She did not specify what she was talking about.
“We will definitely talk about it this week, or when people on TV stop saying things that are wrong. Whichever comes first. The point is: It won’t be never.”