- SECAUCUS - Secretary of Homeland
Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday
afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."
-
- Well there's your problem right there.
-
- If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response
to a crisis, this was it. The seeming definition of
our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal
budgets for projects that might've saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization
of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could
barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty
Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming
identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the
future tense in terms of relief they could've brought last Monday and Tuesday
- like the President, whose statements have looked like they're being transmitted
to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
-
- But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization
will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically
called "The Department of Homeland Security": "Louisiana
is a city"
-
- Politician after politician - Republican and Democrat
alike - has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me"
switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they
were or how devastated they were - congenitally incapable of telling the
difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
-
- And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged
on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts
to save the stranded - even the internet's meager powers were correctly
devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.
-
- But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially
worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state,
not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week
or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence
I mentioned, should come to an end.
-
- No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the
afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes.
Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement
for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges
for the politicians of Alaska.
-
- But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election
last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping
the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media
in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station
in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't
even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure
collapse in New Orleans - even though the government had heard all the
"chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane
centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern...
a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
-
- And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order
and Terror government. It promised protection - or at least amelioration
- against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
-
- It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from
a biological weapon called standing water.
-
- Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not
satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the
Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on
this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know
where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man
whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy
Will Let You Die'?
-
- I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.
-
- For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been
- as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be - whether or
not I voted for this President - he is still my President. I suspect anybody
who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week.
I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering
how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his
government - our government - "New Orleans."
-
- For him, it is a shame - in all senses of the word. A
few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much
like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick
"I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of
hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had
he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The
responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament
"for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is
in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
-
- In forgetting that, the current administration did not
merely damage itself - it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely
on whoever is in the White House.
-
- As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities
of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable
for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when
the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug
up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic
mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.
-
- Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
-
-
-
- Comment
- Bob Barnes
- voguy@kconline.com
- 9-7-5
-
- Mr. Olbermann...
-
- I want to congratulate you on your Monday night editorial
"The 'City' of Louisiana." I believe it is the finest broadcast
editorial I've heard in my 59 years in radio & TV, in a league with
Murrow and Severeid, and certainly deserving of a Peabody. I felt the same
astonished pride I felt listening to Ed Murrow bury the McCarthy witch
hunters in the hard clay of reason and sensibility some 40 years ago.
-
- I also commend you for announcing in advance that it
was an editorial--too many today present their opinions as "news"
based solely on being in a position to do so.
-
- The build-up to the message (I also commend Lisa Myer
for bringing to mainstream news the "horse-counseling" background
of MD Brown and his "good ol' boy" appointment to FEMA by his
college room mate and near equal in competency, Joe Allbaugh), the emotional
piece featuring the President of Jefferson Parish, and the interview with
the former FEMA director Haddo laid the groundwork and set the stage for
an editorial I will remember as long as I live.
-
- And speaking of horse counseling, I hope the powers to
be at NBC were as impressed as I was for, just as there are far better
qualified people for federal agencies than those currently in place, there
are far better qualified newsmen for three recently-weakened anchor chairs
than the asses currently therein.
-
- Thank you and congratulations on a job well done.
-
- Bob Barnes
- Voice Artist
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