I'm getting terribly sick of the blame game happening in the media right now. Cut it out. Thousands of people and billions of dollars are flowing into the area. These are well-meaning hard-working people and green dollars.
If you're just a negative person and must, must blame somebody, let me help you out:
1) Blame Katrina. Cat 4 when she hit. Dropped water. I think she's somewhat culpable. Or, by proxy, blame Mother Nature, that incredible bitch whore.
2) Blame the levee designers. The fact that they broke is what really caused things to get ugly. Hang an engineer in effigy, if it makes you feel any better.
3) Blame the media. Talk about a slow response. Even with all of their fancy satellite phones and people on the scene it took 36 hours after landfall for a sense that things were really bad came from the media. Oh, wait, that's because it took that long for the levees to break and things to really get bad. The day after the storm it was still raining and windy so they couldn't see anything. Then nightfall hit and the levees broke. Then the next morning we started to hear that things were bad. Where's the response, huh media? All you had to do was Xxxking talk into a microphone and it took you 36 hours. Hell, you even tempered aid response speed with your "New Orleans Spared Direct Hit" headlines.
4) Blame Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, the Xxxhole who put the city in a flood zone in 1718.
5) Blame the politicians of New Orleans, including Ray Nagin, for not funding bigger levees. That Xxxhole's shooting off at the mouth at everybody but his own administration. A few years ago the city newspaper ran a series of articles arguing for the funding of better levees. Political hilarity ensued. Now this.
Before landfall the administration was being lauded for its preparation, placing more people in theatre than it ever has before a storm. Now the same media outlets are lambasting the administration for everything from water shortages to looting. Stop being negative and sensational. It's a national tragedy. It's ugly. People need help. We get it.
Roads are broken. Railways are bent. Airports are broken or jammed. The city is under X feet of water. It's not easy to get reporters in, much less multi-ton food containers.
Do you really think for one Xxxking second that anybody has tried to slow the help? Or, better put, do you really think that a systemic desire to slow aid exists? (Because I'm sure you'll find that one Xxxhole who did try to slow progress and wave him all over the airwaves for weeks. He's an irrelevant Xxxhole and doesn't speak for the thousands who are working hard right now.) Do you think the thousands of people assigned to FEMA are stupid? Do you think that you, Mr./Mrs. Television Producer, know more about the logistics of supply delivery in a water-covered city than FEMA? (Yeah, I'm sure your Connecticut School of Broadcasting curriculum included Emergency Supply Logistics 101.)
The task at hand is incredibly difficult. Progress is being made. Don't turn it into a race thing. Don't turn it into a political thing. Don't turn against your fellow Americans.
Don't buy the hype coming from the media outlets. The actual timeline of events is much more compressed than they report. The actual aid response is much more massive than they report. Each media outlet has, what, twenty reporters on the scene? Why do they think they can see everything that's happening? A producer last night said that it felt like viewing the city "through a straw."
Stay positive and we'll get through this. If you wonder why the world thinks Americans are Xxxholes, just look at how our media (not our people) goes on the offensive in a time of crisis. All they see is the media coverage. Is that how you want to be seen in the world? Bunch of bickering Xxxholes.
From what I'm seeing third hand through the media we're turning a corner. Supplies are flowing. People are being evacuated. Levees are being repaired.
We need to get beyond the blame game and ask ourselves how we're going to deal with the one and a half million people displaced from the city of New Orleans. We keep hearing about the roughly 50,000 still in the city or the 75,000 now in shelters. What about the folks who actually fled before the storm? They're in hotels and no longer have homes or jobs. What will they do? What will we do to help?
Sunday, February 7, 2010