I thought it was bad when Michael Chertoff tried to shift blame to the disaster’s victims. Then Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania started talking about criminal penalties. (Later, Santorum tried to blame the National Weather Service. We can only hope he soon finds a reliable source for a better grade of crack than he’s been smoking recently.)
When Barbara Bush said things were “working very well” for poor evacuees, I joked that it was “like a great big camp-out.” House Republican Leader Tom DeLay compared the evacuation to camping out, too. He asked three boys at a temporary shelter, “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”
Clear Channel radio host Glenn Beck calls the hurricane survivors in New Orleans “scumbags,” and manages to get in a shot at the families of 9/11 victims, too.
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert would like to bulldoze New Orleans. The Wall Street Journal reported that Rep. Richard Baker of Baton Rouge said, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” (Baker says he was misquoted.)
But some see a bright future for New Orleans. James Reiss, a wealthy resident and city official, was quoted in a Wall Street Journal story:
The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically,” he says. “I’m not just speaking for myself here. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again, or we’re out.”
Do you suppose that the way we’ll get “fewer poor people” is by lifting people out of poverty? No, I didn’t think so, either.
Katrina has certainly unmasked a lot of people.
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