September 8, 2005 Issue

The account of Hunter S. Thompson’s memorial service, held recently in Aspen, Colo. will have to wait. Thompson, who ended his life in part because of physical and emotional pain due to years of drug and alcohol use, was said to be in a major depression over the political mood of this country since the re-election of President Bush. Nothing that has happened in recent days would have lifted that depression.

New Orleans has long been a desperate city. Affluent visitors, who stayed at the Windsor Court Hotel and ate breakfast at Mother’s, lunch at Gallatoire’s, and dinner at Pascal Manales, may have had a luxurious, hedonistic experience in the Crescent City. Many did not know that they were oftentimes one city block away from abject poverty, mayhem, and murder.

Hurricane Katrina has exposed so many aspects of our society. It created a treasure trove for journalists. People complain that there was sensational reporting. When there is a sensational event; that is what happens. Too many negative stories? The positive ones were almost non-existent. A boy scout helping an elderly lady across the street was not going to make the news last week.

It is a funny thing about water. Out in the arid western United States they say water flows towards money. In the South water flows towards poor people. In New Orleans those unfortunate and desperate people live in the ninth ward.

With the breaching of the levee at the 17th Street canal and the subsequent flooding of the ninth ward, the boobs started their attack. “They should have evacuated. They had plenty of time and warning to get out.” What they didn’t have, don’t have, and won’t have is money. And money is how people get out of desperate situations. A Warren Zevon song had an analogous chorus. “Send lawyers, guns, and money; Dad get me out of this.” The folks in the ninth ward had only one of the prerequisites for getting out of a jam. They didn’t have lawyers or money or fathers, but some of them did have guns. Many of them have crack addictions and most of them have a total lack of hope. Hope is the antidote to desperation.

I have been around many of the people who call the ninth ward home. That is where the hard working, dedicated women who have cooked and served at Mothers restaurant live. They have been the lifeblood of Jerry Amato’s operation for many decades. Why didn’t they just evacuate like the white folks who lived up-town?

Well, for one thing, even though these folks work their asses off, and make a decent living by many standards, these people don’t have enough money to park a car in New Orleans, much less own a car and keep it full of gas. They use public transportation. They ride a city bus to and from work. What were they expected to do as a fast moving storm approached? Hoof it out of town?

Leaving an approaching storm often has many other complications. My father has Alzheimer’s and is not very mobile. With all of our resources it is difficult to move him. Large, extended families can have factors making it almost impossible to relocate with a month’s notice. These people didn’t have the luxury of time.

The last hurricane that I evacuated for was Camille in 1969. My parents and I retreated to Florala, Ala. Since then I have been in more storms than I can count, and I haven’t evacuated for one of them. There have been several times, in Destin and in the Bahamas, where I have actually traveled to a storm. I have money and a car. I even have a personal weather computer. If I had gotten stranded in a bad storm it would have been my fault. Those folks stranded on their rooftops were not at fault. They were just victims. And that is something they are familiar with.

These people have been neglected for years. As they went about their behind-the-scenes jobs of preparing food and cleaning hotel rooms for affluent tourists, they were never more than a paycheck away from being homeless—without the help of a major hurricane and a ramshackle infrastructure.

We all know how important it is to take care of the little things in life. In the scheme of a major urban area, the levee that broke was a little thing. It wouldn’t have cost that much to make it secure. But in these times, when we are busy spreading democracy in a God-forsaken part of the world that levee was overlooked.

Countries around the world have been aghast at our brazen ineptitude and lack of planning in Iraq. If democracy is our trump card and its strength was on display this past week; people around the world have got to be confused.

What did we expect from our country’s leaders? These people don’t have the tools to operate this nation in times of blissful largesse. In crisis after crisis they have proved to be incapable of showing leadership or even telling us the truth.

Mike Brown, the head of FEMA, has a strong background for his position. His prior job was as spokesperson for the Arabian Horse Breeders. When our august Homeland Security department showed up for this nightmare, I knew the jig was up. This guy Chertoff has had his hands full checking every friggin pair of shoes on every airline flight to make sure some 80-year-old passengers weren’t packing catastrophic bombs in their espadrilles.

These guys are depressingly dumb. They can’t seem to get anything right. From weapons of mass destruction to the expectation that a liberating army would be greeted with hugs and flowers, those in charge get almost everything wrong. There were no WMDs and the only hugs are found at the funerals of our young soldiers. The only flowers are those at the graves. Our leaders are not only astonishingly inept—they are unlucky. That’s a bad combination.

The storm did manage to take Iraq out of the headlines for a week. Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld, who were thankfully absent from the Katrina relief efforts, have just renamed our mission in that part of the world. We are no longer fighting a War Against Terrorism. Apparently someone finally told them that we could never win that battle. We are now engaged in the euphemistic Struggle Against Global Extremism. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote recently: “A struggle is something you have with your landlord.”

But struggle on we will. When your leaders have a lack of intelligence, imagination, and ingenuity, and they are intrinsically and genetically bereft of compassion; you get what we have today. As President Bush has so often and so eloquently put it: “It is hard work.” You’re damned right it is.

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