Posted on 09/07/2005 1:47:06 PM PDT by .cnI redruM
"To my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.” — novelist and New Orleans resident Anne Rice
Let me get this straight.
Ms. Rice, you live in (what was) a very attractive city which lies below sea level. On one side you have a giant lake; on the other side you have the Gulf of Mexico. Running through the middle is the Mississippi River. All of which are above you.
Preventing those giant bodies of water from flooding and drowning you are levees. These levees are described as “century-old.” People have been warning about the devastating effects of a direct hit from a hurricane for decades.
I’ve heard a great deal of complaint in recent days that the federal government may not have allocated enough money to speed up the upgrades to those levees. This does, however, raise the question of why city and state residents were waiting around for the federal government to send enough money to upgrade this, instead of paying for it themselves. I mean, it was only your homes, businesses, and lives at stake. Perhaps these upgrades would have been expensive. If only this city had some sort of events to attract tourists, from which to collect taxes.
Anyway, your state and local officials decided to spend your tax dollars on something else that they (and presumably you) found more important, and then they waited for the rest of the country to pay for these life-preserving necessities.
Your beloved city and region has a colorful political history, in which there is, oh, a wee bit of corruption. I’m from New Jersey, so I can’t throw stones at that glass house. But you guys have managed to pick leaders who give you the worst of both worlds — they’re scandal ridden and incompetent in a crisis. Look, Rudy Giuliani might have run around with Judith Nathan before his divorce, but he was a hell of a leader in our darkest hours. You know the National Review crowd isn’t a fan of Pataki, but the man was a rock after 9/11 compared to Governor Weepy I’ll-Evacuate-Eventually and Mayor It’s-Everybody’s-Fault-Except-Mine. Nobody’s throwing around the adjective “Churchillian” about any of your officials these days. We didn’t pick your local officials; you guys did.
Rice asks, “how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid?”
Ahem. What about those buses left unused, less than a mile from the Superdome? JunkYardBlog notes that it’s written in the Southeast Louisiana Evacuation Plan that buses are supposed to be used for evacuation of those who don’t have personal vehicles. As JYB observes, “there is something very peculiar about a city and a state that have a plan on the books for years that outlines what to do when a hurricane is about to strike, yet when a hurricane comes roaring in, the responsible officials just chuck the plan and try winging it. Delaying and then winging it in the face of a monstrous Cat 4/5 hurricane is never, ever a good idea, especially for New Orleans.” (See more here.) Ironically, Nagin told CNN, “I need buses, man,” when he had plenty sitting around unused before the storm hit. Now they’re flooded and useless.
But it’s not like state and local officials could have seen this coming. They have never had a hurricane bearing down on them before and… oh, wait, there was Hurricane Ivan just last year. And after that dodged bullet, Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged they needed a better evacuation plan.
I would note that we’ve seen some pretty intense disasters in other parts of the country, like planes crashing into skyscrapers and subsequently collapsing, earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, and yet somehow, none of these disasters had the total breakdown of law and order, civil society, etc. Jonah Goldberg’s early joke about a Mad-Max style post-apocalyptic tribal anarchy may have been in poor taste, but it has turned out to be nightmarishly prescient.
We failed you? No, oh brilliant creator of Exit to Eden, you failed. You might not think of it this way, but: Your leaders failed to upgrade the levees. You elected a bunch of weepers and blame-shifters who lost their head in a crisis.
Over the past decades, your elected officials have let a criminal element incubate and grow until they ruled the streets, instead of the forces of law and order. In pop culture, a New Orleans thief is always a charming rogue with a devilish smile. In reality, they’re a bunch of thugs.
If the number of residents who are looting thugs were such a “tiny minority,” we wouldn’t have seen this widespread, relentless anarchy. Madam, a noticeable number of your neighbors saw this disaster as an opportunity to smash a window and run away with a television, an act that reveals much about the inadequacies of the local school system, since that thief won’t be enjoying that television with any electricity anytime soon.
I would also note that this is one hell of a police force your local officials hired and that you and your neighbors tolerated. 50 percent turned in their badges during the crisis and quit. Your police superintendent is conceding that some cops were looting. Just want to refresh your memory — four years ago, New York and Washington, planes falling out of the sky, thousands dead, no idea what the hell is coming next… and the cops, among others, showed up to work.
To save you guys now, I — and a lot of other Americans — will pitch in. We are witnessing the biggest mobilization of civilian and military rescue and relief crews in history. But I have a sneaking suspicion you’re going to want the rest of us to pay for the rebuilding of your city. (In the near future, we’re going to have to have a little chat about the wisdom of building below sea level, directly next to large bodies of water.) And if you’re going to come to the rest of us hat in hand, demanding the rest of us clean up after your poor judgment, I’d appreciate a little less “you failed us” and a little more “we’ve learned our lesson.”
Pssst, Ann Rice; Quite honestly, I haven't gone to your mardigras in 15 years because it is nothing but a good way to get mugged by one of the members of your HUGE criminal population, and I don't admire public nudity and debauchery, besides. People at your jazz fest at least seem to keep their clothes on and are not fornicating in doorways in your truly lovely historical district. I can get your food at any of a number of restaurants within 25 miles of where I live in the middle of rural nowhere in Texas-and I love to read, but I think your books stink-stick to writing your depressing supernatural fantasies and leave the helping of people to those who know what the hell they are doing...
Disgusting. There are a million things to write about and she wries about older men having sex with teenage foster daughters and she writes about vampires. But the paycheck is good. She's worth millions from the vampire books
Is Anne Rice a poor, black woman?
Perhaps she has half her brain tied behind her back... leaving her totally incapacitated!
Anne Rice's take . . .
Ellen Degeneres was born in NO, she grew up in NO, and her entire family lost everything there. So please get your facts right before you make accusations like that.
Excellent post!!! I'd like to add: Mizz Rice, how about simply saying "thank you"? Then maybe you can tell us all, Ms. Rice, why NOLA deserves more attention than Biloxi or Mobile or any of the other places destroyed by Katrina.
Finally, after all these years, the rabid race-hysteria being retailed by the far Left, the Democrats, and the press over the Katrina aftermath is starting to de-sensitize the rest of us ordinary people.
You no longer have to feel secretly guilty and embarrassed whenever someone asks you if you don't like them because they're black.
Just say: SURE! And I'll bet you think George Bush forced black people to eat corpses to survive!
Aww..... well, I'm sure Ms. Rice had nothing but the best intentions.... heh.
This sounds like you ping
That she also writes plotless BDSM novels full of spankings, whippings, and butt plugs?
She's not his foster daughter, she's just a teen with a crush who picks him up at a book signing. I read it years ago. It kept my attention, but so did Stephen King, when I was that age.
"Give money to Mississippi Catholic Charities."
Ok, just because you said so, I will!
At the suggestion of writer Michelle Malkin last Friday, I have cobbled together a blogsite called Texas Clearinghouse for Katrina Aid to serve as a clearinghouse for refugee efforts in Texas.
Texas is getting more refugees than any other state -- that's fine, we'll take them all -- but we need help providing them with food, clothing, and shelter.
If you are a refugee, you can information that will help you find relief. If you want to donate or volunteer, you can find someone who needs you.
Right now the site mostly covers Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas but I will add various churches, schools, and other charities in Lubbock and Austin tonight. My wife was down at Reunion Arena in Dallas yesterday handing out care packages and spiritually ministering to the refugees as a representative of her employer. She says that the situation is tragic and that there's a lot of work to be done. There are so many children who don't know where their parents are or even if their parents are still alive.
There are a lot of churches and other organizations in Texas that need help in dealing with the problem and I would appreciate it if you would get the word out.
Many thanks,
Michael McCullough
Stingray blogsite
Oh.
Amen. Has anyone emailed this to Oprah?
No, she's a liberal, white bloodsucker.
>>>>And I'll bet you think George Bush forced black people to eat corpses to survive!
Anne Rice has another plot hook for her next novel.
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