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____, I love you, you know that, but this forward is a bunch of crap--and because I love you, I'm choosing not to delete it, but to explain to you why this is so. First of all, I 100% guarantee you that it isn't actually George Carlin's work; I've seen three or four e-mail forwards *supposedly* written by him, and none of them actually were. Famous people don't generally send convenient e-mails on controversial subjects to the general public, unless they're politicians with a mailing list.
But honestly, the author of this particular forward is the least of its problems. It's based on a lovely little Rush Limbaugh/Horatio Algier fantasy land where if everybody just worked hard and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps everything would be OK...it would be nice if that were true, but it's not reality. You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you have no shoes.
And you can't evacuate if you don't have the resources (which a job at McDonalds or Wal-Mart will not get you, sorry). How the hell are you supposed to get out of a city with 24 hours notice when you have no car, no gas money, and nowhere to go? And even a lot of the ones who DID have the car and the gas money to leave couldn't do it, because in the end the highways were too crowded and it was safer for them to turn around and go home, rather than be exposed on the road when a Cat 5 hurricane hit.
What do you tell all the elderly and sick people in hospitals and nursing homes who were just abandoned? I'd like the author of this e-mail to go to all those exhausted, shell-shocked doctors and nurses who were THERE for a week trying to save people, watching them die instead (people WHO DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE, who could have been saved with just a little more effort and a little less cluelessness) that they have no one to blame but themselves, that they just should have gotten off their asses and gotten out.
What about the prison inmates who were left there for three or four days without food or water? I mean, sure, they're in prison to be punished and all, but I didn't think that included being drowned/starved/left to rot in festering pollution...particularly when most of them are probably in there because they got caught with too much weed or something.
And what the hell were all those rumors about people shooting at planes but just that--RUMORS??? There were never any substantiated reports about it, just a few allegations hurled around by newspeople looking for a big story--and even if there were shots fired, it's quite logical to surmise that it was people firing shots into the air to let the helicopters KNOW THEY WERE THERE, seeing as they'd been left there for days and all.
Looting? Who are the real looters here? Did you know that there were people that came from all across the country, people with boats and cars, doctors, etc...all there to try to get people out of New Orleans, or to deliver food, water, or aid, and FEMA wouldn't let them in. Why not? Because they had contractors to do all those things. After all, why save as many lives as quickly as possible when it might cost somebody a few bucks? I'll never forget the president sitting their in his nice suit explaining to Diane Sawyer that he just couldn't justify looting under any circumstances, even when his own damned incompetent appointees were the ones allowing those very circumstances to continue.
The people of New Orleans did the best they could, for the most part. I happen to know a few of them, and until you've met and talked with somebody who went through Katrina and survived it, you have no room whatsoever to judge them for their choices, period. The bottom line is, the federal government dropped the ball. They didn't know what was going on, didn't try very hard to find out what was going on, and didn't really care who died as a result of their ignorance and complacence. Marty Bahamonde testified this week concerning Michael Brown's conduct in the aftermath of Katrina. If you haven't heard or read about any of the things he had to say, you should. This guy works for FEMA, and he was on the ground, in the Superdome as the events were unfolding. He stressed over and over again to Brown how urgent the situation was, but all good ol' Brownie could think about was making sure he had enough time to eat dinner (restaurants were getting awful busy, ya know).
It's been four years since 9/11, and they've run up a deficit into the trillions of dollars, making their buddies richer in the process, all in the name of "security." Where the hell is our security when our own citizens can go to the Superdome, a DESIGNATED shelter where they were told to go, or to the Convention Center, a DESIGNATED shelter where they were told to go, and be left for a week, many of them to die of dehydration???
But what bothers me the most is the absolute heartlessness that so many people have had to the entire event. How can anyone watch fathers holding their sick and emaciated babies up to the cameras, just begging for some water, and not wonder what the fuck has happened? How can anyone see an old lady curled over dead in a lawn chair, and not feel absolutely despondent that this is our country doing this, that these are our people suffering and dying in squalor. How can anyone watch a ten-year-old child, with eyes like an old man, explaining how his grandmother will die in a few days if she doesn't get insulin, saying how ashamed he is to be an American, and not feel that shame multiplied in his- or herself? How can anyone watch this for three, four, five days, and not be absolutely appalled, outraged, and disgusted by the level of disregard and incompetence on display here?
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