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September 13, 2005
Katrina Jambalya
An interesting "Katrina Jambalaya" of narcissism, fakery, ignorance, adolescent and criminal behavior, incompetence, lots-o-money, grandstanding, laziness, finger-pointing, and stupidity is being served up post-Katrina. But this jambalaya isn't just a Creole dish ...
Austin Bay, in "Katrina: Is it all about Cooper?" talks about fakery and moral airs on TV ...
24/7 tv craves drama and emotion — especially easily identified emotions, like anger, rage, fear. Think Greek dramatic masks, the cork or linen masks Greek actors wore in the ampitheater so the audience could quickly identify the character and the emotion.
Did you know slavery has returned to the South? ... or at least bloviation is still there ... baldilocks says this clown, er, slave, Fisks himself:
Man: What I would like to happen? I would like for them to give us at least $20,000 apiece so we can, you know, get our life together. You know, we didn't ask to come on that bus, slave. It's like a slave ship. It's just like, you know, back in history, you know, they put us on a slave ship. They separated us from our family. They did it--you know, just modern-day slavery, you know? Just give us what the f--- we deserve.
You know, like, you know ... you know?
James Taranto (Best of the Web, September 12, 2005) said about this particular occupant of the slave ship: "Looks just like a slave ship, doesn't it? Well, except that on a slave ship, he probably wouldn't have his arm around a white woman."
Taranto is gonna catch hell for that ...
baldilocks later quotes from an email she received:
It was heart breaking to hear their stories on the local TV. One man needed only one more years work to retire, one was a chemical factory worker (hired instantly by a local factory), one worked for the city, I believe one was a merchant, you get the idea. This is the opposite of what the MSM is telling. These are not poor, black, poverty stricken, non working, welfare expecting people. These are black Americans who consider themselves working middle class and who by natural disaster have lost all they have spent their lives working for. They arrived at 1am Sunday morning and some went to work this week. One man cried on camera in shame of not being able to take care of his family and having to accept charity. He also cried when he showed three handwritten pages of phone numbers and job offers he had received in a couple of days.
The Evacuees, September 13, 2005
how come most of the stories of New Orleans refugees we're hearing about seem to be about either the very well-off, or the poor, or the slaves ... are there any able-bodied middle class folks who lost everything? ... just wondering ...
George Will comments ("Post-Katrina Liberalism," Townhall, September 13, 2005) on how race-baiters are using the occasion to not let facts get in the way of grandstanding:
America's always fast-flowing river of race-obsessing has overflowed its banks, and last Sunday on "This Week" Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois' freshman Democrat, applied to the expression of old banalities a fluency that would be beguiling were it without content. Unfortunately, it included the requisite lament about the president's inadequate "empathy" and an amazing criticism of the government's "historic indifference" and its "passive indifference" that "is as bad as active malice." The senator, 44, is just 30 months older than the "war on poverty" that President Johnson declared in January 1964. Since then the indifference that is as bad as active malice has been expressed in more than $6.6 trillion of antipoverty spending, strictly defined.The senator is called a "new kind of Democrat," which often means one with new ways of ignoring evidence discordant with old liberal orthodoxies about using cash -- much of it spent through liberalism's "caring professions" -- to cope with cultural collapse. He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.
. . .
Liberalism's post-Katrina fearlessness in discovering the obvious -- if an inner city is inundated, the victims will be disproportionately minorities -- stopped short of indelicately noting how many of the victims were women with children but not husbands. Released during the post-Katrina debacle, scant attention was paid to the National Center for Health Statistics' pertinent report that in 2003, 34.6 percent of all American births were to unmarried women. The percentage among African-American women was 68.2.Given that most African-Americans are middle class and almost half live outside central cities, and that 76 percent of all births to Louisiana African-Americans were to unmarried women, it is a safe surmise that more than 80 percent of African-American births in inner-city New Orleans -- as in some other inner cities -- were to women without husbands. That translates into a large and constantly renewed cohort of lightly parented adolescent males, and that translates into chaos, in neighborhoods and schools, come rain or come shine.
George, George, George ... the problem is that we had only "$6.6 trillion of antipoverty spending." ... we needed to spend at least twice as much ... or, according to the slave above, give every one on the "slave ship" $20,000 ... then everything would be fine ... there would be no more poverty ... just imagine ...
But, as Asymmetrical Information points out, "The poor really are different," September 9, 2005:
If poor people did just four things, the poverty rate would be a fraction of what it currently is. Those four things are:1) Finish high school
2) Get married before having children
3) Have no more than two children
4) Work full time. . .
That leaves us in a rather awkward place, because while I don't agree with conservatives that the poor are somehow worse people than we are, I also don't agree with liberals that money is the answer. Money buys material goods, which are not really the biggest problem that most poor people in America have. And I don't know how you go about providing the things they're missing: the robust social networks, the educational and occupational opportunity, the ability to construct a long-term life instead of one that is lived day-to-day. I think that we should remove the barriers, like poor schools, that block achievement from without, but I don't know what to do about the equally powerful barriers that block it from within.But I also don't think that the answer is to use those barriers as an excuse to wash our hands of the matter.
Captain's Quarters in "Will New Orleans Death Toll Escalate?" September 13, 2005, observes:
That prediction [of 10,000 dead in New Orleans] by Mayor Ray Nagin may yet still come to pass as more of the city emerges from the floodwaters. At this point, though, it will provide yet another example of the hysteria that finds its home with the unprepared and the passive, those who want others to do the work that should have already been done by themselves. The figure got a lot of press play because of its spectacular nature and because of the official status of the man proclaiming it.The Exempt Media should ask themselves whether the estimate of 10,000 casualties had any other basis in fact. If so, they need to explain what else prompted them to report that as a reliable range. If not, then they need to rethink using reports from overwhelmed local politicians who used such estimates to shove attention off of their own performances.
And PowerLine points out in "Business Week Publishes Democratic Party Hit-Piece As News, Forgets to Warn Readers" that the adminstration's approach to telecom de-regulation is probably not responsible for the collapse of communication after Katrina:
Today's example of MSM bias: this Business Week article by Leo Hindery, Jr., titled "Tragedy and Telecom." The article is subtitled, "How the Bush Administration's antiregulation stance contributed to the post-Katrina communications collapse -- and what should be done now." Mr. Hindery's indictment of the Bush administration is the latest effort to blame the President for just about everything associated with Hurricane Katrina. Its reasoning is so fragmentary, however, that Hindery never does explain why "the Bush administration's antiregulation stance" had anything to do with the hurricane or its aftermath.
Ben Stein, however, in "Get Off His Back," September 2, 2005, has a list of 12 things George Bush did not do:
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.
. . .
5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan.6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.
. . .
11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.
and in an update asks some questions, including
What church does Rev. Al Sharpton belong to that believes in passing blame and singling out people by race for opprobrium and hate?
. . .
Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush's fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?
The last ingredients for Katrina Jambalaya are an incompetent mayor and members of his police department who go "shopping" at a Wal-Mart with other looters ...
There's even a song to go with Katrina Jumbalaya ... The Right Place has put together "New Orleans Rhapsody"
Making a bigger batch of a recipe that wasn't nutritious in the past ... is still a recipe for more of the same ... and adding a few ingredients and renaming the recipe "Katrina Jambalaya" won't make this putrid dish any better ... or more effective ...
Posted at September 13, 2005 09:36 AM | Categories: Ignorance , Katrina Jambalaya , Politics