In his sometimes hokey, sometimes endearing book The Prophet, Khalil Gibran admonished: "Do not compare yourself to others, for you will become vain or bitter." It is a warning that Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, and AJ Holloway, the mayor of Biloxi, would do well to heed. Barbour said the devastation on America's Gulf Coast looked like Hiroshima must have, while Holloway unwittingly echoed Kent Brownridge, the publisher of US weekly, in declaring, "This is our tsunami."

Hurricane Katrina is indeed rather more serious than Brad & Jen's breakup (Brownridge's tsunami). The plight of New Orleans, Gulfport, Bilxoi, et al, is very, very bad and sad. But comparing it to situations where hundreds of thousands of people perished shows not only insensitivity and self-centeredness of the highest caliber, but also demonstrates how little notice Americans give to the outside world. If Barbour actually realized that Hiroshima in 1945 was in fact much, much worse than southern Mississippi today, perhaps he'd be a bit less keen on American war. Comments like Barbour's and Holloway's are upsetting not because they violate a sense of politically correct propriety, but because they betray an obliviousness of just how much suffering there can be. And that obliviousness, in the most powerful country on Earth, is dangerous.