I’m often asked from folks both from within the city and those from afar why I live in Nashville. I didn’t grow up here. I have no family connections to the place. I moved here to go to college. But I never left. Why I never left is not something I’ve ever been able to verbalize. I still can’t, but I can point to the events of this past week as a shining example of why, when people ask we whether I am looking to relocate to find employment, I tell them no.
When the interstates became impassable and the buildings started floating down Briley Parkway, many Nashvillians wondered where the national media was. One couldn’t log in to Twitter or Facebook or peruse a local blog without witnessing the complaints.
“While everyone in Nashville began to wonder why CNN, Fox, et al, were ignoring them, they didn’t really stop to actually care,” Rex Hammock said of the media black out of the first few days. “They were too busy out helping their neighbors.”
Now I don’t completely agree with Hammock. People certainly did care. But he is right that the griping did not become paralyzing or all consuming. We still did what we needed to — whether media or the government were coming to our rescue or not.
The beautiful thing about the times we live in is that while we were complaining about the lack of attention, we were out proving that we didn’t really need the national media to get the word out. Maybe the noisemakers on cable TV didn’t hop-to in the fashion they should have, but it wasn’t like information on the floods was unavailable. Citizen reports were beamed out through social networks and blogs as they were happening, and they were filtering out to the nation, frankly, even before some local media outlets were really working at full speed.
But still some wanted validation by the national media, and it was not forthcoming. Some asserted the reason was two other simultaneous news events happening that weekend. And it is true, a bomb scare in New York as well as as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico did suck some of the air out of the national newsroom. But, as Betsy Phillips pointed out, it was not as if the cable stations were carrying news of these events non-stop. There was sufficient airtime. So obviously there was something else going on here.
The list of possible explanations of why national media outlets didn’t cover the Nashville Flood until they were essentially shamed into doing so have been legion. Phillips posits that it was the lack of a news “hook” that the flood simply did not offer as exciting a narrative or provide sufficiently explosive political implications. This explanation has merit and was likely part of the equation. However, Jim Reams comes closer.
“It’s true that we aren’t entirely like some of you,” Reams explains. “We hold the door open for old ladies and say thank you to the cashier and get called “hon” by the waitress at the Waffle House. We say “y’all” and “all y’all” and we eat grits and biscuits. And here’s another thing, we’re quick to help people, but we’re also quick to mind our own business.”
In the film the Last of the Mohicans (1992), Daniel Day Lewis’s character explains that his Native American father has little patience for the white man “because they are a breed apart and make no sense.” While we should strive to avoid overt politics when discussing this disaster, culture is something that simply can’t be avoided.
As much as we like to think that people are people and that any community, if their backs were against the wall, would come together as we did — I’m not so sure. We’ve seen other cities face crises both bigger and smaller than ours and not acquit themselves nearly as well. We are different.
No, we do not fit the stereotypes that many across of the country have of us. We are not, as Reams reminds us, all wearing cowboy hats and working in the music business. We are not all hicks and rednecks (not that there is anything wrong with being either). We are a diverse community like any other major U.S. city.
But the media elite don’t see us as we are.
They ignored us because even though this city voted for Barack Obama in just as great a percentage as any New Jersey suburb, Nashville represents Middle America to them. We aren’t L.A. or New York. We don’t have the party appeal of New Orleans. We are Nashville. The country music capital. To many in New York, L.A. and D.C., we might as well be the cracker capital. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a conscious dislike. It’s not heat. To them, we are simply uninteresting and unimportant. We are dispensable.
On Sept. 11, 2001, when those towers fell and all those New Yorkers died, Middle America, Nashville included, wept. Even though, a large number of those who lived and worked in Manhattan had very little in common with many who work and live in and around Nashville, we all became New Yorkers that day. But when Nashville was hurting, the media elite, many of them based in New York, were MIA.
Of course, the analogy is imperfect to say the least. We did not experience a terrorist attack. But, while it did not carry boxcutters and hijack an airplane, that water was an enemy nonetheless and a worthy adversary as the destruction in Bellevue and elsewhere makes clear. The water took much from us but we took it in stride and acted accordingly. I can’t help but notice that while we were Nashville in that moment, they in New York were not.
If they did not notice when we took on more water than we had in generations, would they notice if something much worse happened? Would America have become Nashville, as America became New York on 9/11. Would they rally behind us as we did them? I can’t help but assume that the answer would be no.
Blake Wylie tweeted during the disaster that Nashville would be a better city after the flood was all said and done. It’s a nice sentiment but not true. The flood didn’t change Nashville. Nashville was the same city before the flood as it will be after the last FEMA check is cashed. This is not to belittle the city’s response but to praise it. What happened was something to behold. But it is hardly surprising to those who know the city. What happened, instead of the chaos, looting and finger pointing that would happen elsewhere, is why I am here — and why I’m not leaving.
I’m here because we are Nashville but I’m also here because they are not.
Kleinheider. 
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