In May 2010 Nashville suffered from its greatest flooding in history.
Barack Obama went golfing.
It was the largest natural disaster since the Civil War.
Via The Christian Science Monitor:
The deadly flood that soaked Nashville, including iconic music dives like the Grand Ole Opry, may become the worst disaster to hit the state since the Civil War, and one of the worst non-hurricane disasters in US history.
So where was the 24-hour blitzkrieg news coverage of a major US city under water?
With the Gulf oil spill and the Times Square bombing attempt dominating the news cycle, maybe the relative lack of coverage and attention can be chalked up to disaster overload or the lack of a broader political and social narrative of the kind that drove hurricane Katrina coverage.
But one Facebook group still wondered, “Pardon us, did you notice Nashville is drowning?”
Fortunately, it turns out anonymity suits many Tennesseans fine. Chalk up the ambivalence about the relative lack of national coverage and attention to good old country grit – and a city’s determination to take care of its own.