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Saturday, June 12, 2010

Obama's Katrina

I was reading J. Watland's story in The Eleventh Draft entitled What Obama's Katrina Means and enjoying his writing, as always. He writes of Karl Rove responding to this question in the Wall Street Journal.
http://eleventhdraft.com/blog?id=462

It dawned suddenly on me that the Deepwater Horizon thing could only actually be Obama's Katrina if some of the drilling crew had been stranded on the rig for a week or so before anyone came to rescue them.

Furthermore, what Rove says is of no interest.
I was an observer:

My father was in an isolation ward in the hospital, suffering from pneumonia, although at first the med staff thought it was some tropical disease. (! true);

I gassed up the evening before the storm, figuring the price of gas would skyrocket after Katrina landed;

I went to the hospital later and watched the storm approach;

I watched for four long days afterwards as people waited for rescue: I watched Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera lacerate their comfortable fellows back in the studio - wondering when some bottles of water might be dropped by the Super Dome;

I actually said to myself, "By heavens, they are going to let them die there !"

That's what a Katrina is, not what Karl Rove speaks about.

8 comments:

Ruth said...

Very good clarification.

Montag said...

Thanks. Isn't it amazing how memory changes everything into some sort of mush... eliminating the emotion and the horror of it all into some self-serving custard?

Unknown said...

Anybody who remembers =anything= about Katrina, knows what a silly comparison this thing in the Gulf is with that Exhibit A of government ineptitude and callousness. The administration is guilty of believing BP, which is bad enough.

tpe said...

Yes, it's amazing and depressing, although self-serving custard (nice) was fairly de rigeuer for those in and around the last administration, as far as I can tell. I wonder, from this distance, if anyone (in the USA) has stopped to blame the tragedy on themselves? Or, more specifically, on their continued lust for oil? Poor Brits, we feel under siege as hostile sentiment begins to sweep across the ocean. We loathe BP, too, you know.

Hello, Montag (and Ruth).

I see that six months have passed since I was last here. In the next few days I’m about to start the (enjoyable) task of catching up with everything you’ve written this year. I’ve been doing this (catch-up) with all the writers I follow out here in space, including Trousers.

The reason I mention Trousers specifically, of course, is so that I can bring up the fact that I saw a comment you left for him a while back. You may remember he had been talking about a particularly foul-mouthed stranger, bent double, barking into his phone, turning the air a particularly violent shade of blue. Anyway, you wondered if:

“Maybe he was calling the Tourette's Hotline?”

I’m sorry to say, but this entirely wiped me out. The very idea is beyond funny. I really hope you were hurt with glee as you made this divine speculation. If medals were awarded for such comments, I’d pin one to your fingers in a trice. I pray for the day that I come across a man swearing into a phone so that I can make the same observation to whomsoever I’m with and destroy them in the way you destroyed me. As funny ideas go, this touched the very realms of perfection. It’s a bubbler. It keeps on popping back and exploding into my head.

Sorry, I know this has no relevance to your post, but I felt it needed said.

Okay, I should be gone. I hope everything is as well as can be in your neck of the moods. Back soon to begin the journey to your today......

Kind regards etc...

TPE

Ruth said...

I just began reading Zeitoun, the current One Book One Community book, about a real family who went through Katrina. Good so far.

Montag said...

I have heard of the book. Why is the title Arabic for "olives" ? Is it a family name? There are a few place names "zeitoun" or forms of it.

Montag said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Montag said...

TPE ! Welcome.

I feel like Ahab's gold doubloon, affixed to the masthead, and witness to Ahab's daily pacings upon the quarter-deck, where one morning the captain's eye is newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped and written thereon.

The remark about the Tourette's Hotline - and I re-read Trou's story every now and then - was all bright coin and Quito gold, but it was such a funny story to begin with.

If it has been a full six months that have passed - and I believe it, for I could not divine at first what "tpe" was, until memory roared like a lion rampant - there is something mystifying about it: six months, hmmm...
It is vaguely Golden Bough-ish or ancient mythological: like a sabbatical of a stringent kind, a Pythagorean metempsychosis into other states of being, then - poof! - you're back !