09-06-2005, 05:49 AM
Ladies and gentlemen, Keith Olberman.
Quote:This is not typically a newscast of commentary. I can recall only twice previously offering such perspectives, but something that Homeland Security Chertoff said at his news conference Saturday made this necessary.<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings">http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings</a><!-- m -->
Chertoff: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater."
Well, there's you're problem right there. If ever a slip of the tongue defined a government's response to a crisis. Forget the history of slashed federal budgets that might have saved the levees. Drop the imagery of the government watching Monty Python's Flying Circus while New Orleans drowned. Ignore the symbol of beaurocrats like Mr. Chertoff using only the future tense in terms of relief that they could have supplied last Monday and Tuesday.
We no longer need the PResident sounding like he's on some sort of fiv day tape delay to summarize this debacle. We now have Mr. Chertoff's indelible announcement that Louisiana is a city.
Politician after politician, Republican and Democrat alike has paraded before us unwilling or unable to shut of the 'I, me' switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us how moved they wereor or how devastated they were, congentially incapable of telling the difference between te destruction of a ctiy and the opening of a new supermarket somewhere.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption drags on, I have resisted editorial comment. The effort needd to be on the effort to save the stranded. Even televisions meager were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural and government made.
But now, at last, it has stopped getting exponetially worse in Missipssippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana, the state, not the city. And having given our leaders the week or so they needed to get their acts 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 hurricans. Lord knows that no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below sea level city ahead of 450 million dollar worth of trophy bridges for the politicans in Alaska. But nationally, these are leaders who won re-election lat year largely by protraying their opponents as incapable of keeping this country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressured the news media in this country to report the re-opening of a school or a powerstation in Iraqand which regularly defies it's citizens not to stand up and cheer when something like that is accomplished.
Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power-station from being devastated by infrastruture collapse in New Orleans, even though the government had heard all the chatter from the scientists and city pallners and hurrican centers and some group who's purpose the government couldn't quite discern; a group called the ah, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.
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 it's citizens from a biological weapon called 'standing water.'
Mr. Bush has now twice insited 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 at this time last year was 'I'll protect you, the other guy might let you die.' I don't know which we Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this countries 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 that anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect also 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 a quick, 'I'm not satisfied with my government's response,' instead of hiding behind phrases like no one could have forseen. Had he only remembered Churchill's quote from the 1930's: "The responsibility of government for the public safety," Churchill said, "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 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 able 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 the year 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans they may even find our governments credibility. Somewhere in the 'city' of Louisiana.