Sean Penn and Douglas Brinkley on a paramilitary mission ... into NOLA

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During Sean Penn's appearance on Larry King last night they showed a photo with Sean Penn and Douglas Brinkley on a boat in NOLA.



I knew about Penn's rescues in NOLA and knew Brinkley lived there, made many appearance on Katrina/NOLA and wrote a book on it BUT I didn't know they were together in NOLA.

So I googled and found this fascinating Rolling Stone article on Penn and Brinkley, together with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, and what they did and found in NOLA in the days following Katrina.

It is very long but extremely interesting. I thought I should share.... I'm sure some may have seen back when it was published but I missed it.

Apocalypse There
A journey into the nightmare of New Orleans

MATT TAIBBI

It's a little before midnight on Friday, September 2nd, and I'm sitting in a hotel bar in Houston. Somewhere to the southeast, the worst natural disaster in American history is unfolding in the darkness, with an entire city shrouded in death, panic and disease -- and here we are, a bunch of half-drunk, affluent white people quaffing eleven-dollar foreign beers and planning what appears to be a paramilitary mission to rescue two cats and a maid in the wreckage of New Orleans.

I'm in the lounge of the Four Seasons with Sean Penn and other assorted media creatures, debating the merits of rescuing animals instead of humans in a disaster area. To my left is the eminent historian Douglas Brinkley, a friendly academic whose careful diction reminds me of Bob Woodward's. Brinkley is my contact in Houston. He's friends with Penn, and when he evacuated his home in New Orleans earlier in the week, he left his cats and his maid behind in the flood zone. Now he and Penn are talking about commandeering private jets, helicopters and weapons for a grand mission into hell that begins tomorrow.

-snip-
Actor, historian and journalist pile into this ridiculous vehicle around noon on Saturday with no real concrete plans beyond a determination to find passage into New Orleans. We do have one definite order of business in Baton Rouge, visiting a black family that had just evacuated the city and is staying in a cramped room of a roadside hotel. Penn had seen the Browders on CNN and had called them to ask if he could help. They were hoping that he, being a celebrity, could get into New Orleans somehow and track down a lost relative.
Specifically, one Lillian Browder, the elderly mother of a frantic, gesticulating woman named Dorian Browder. Lillian had stayed behind to protect her home in a waterlogged neighborhood, and now the rest of the family doesn't know where she is.
"We can't get back to her, there's too much chaos," Dorian says, covering her eyes. "The last time I talked to her, the water was up to her waist . . ."

-snip-
The family gives us the address of Lillian's home, and when we leave everyone in the room embraces each of us in turn -- even me, though I have done nothing but stand mute in the back of the room while Sean and Doug talk to Dorian. When Dorian hugs me there are tears in her eyes; she grasps me so hard I drop my notebook.
"God bless you!" she says. "You have to find her. Please!"
"OK," I say, looking at Sean and Doug in a panic. Anyone who places her life-and-death hopes in the hands of a journalist is in a very desperate situation indeed. We all three of us seem to realize this, and we are all affected and even frightened by the raw fear and emotion in the room. There is no more talk about cats. Leaving the hotel, we each independently memorize the address of Lillian Jones -- 621 South Alexander. Reaching this place becomes the whole purpose of the trip.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7661196/apocalypse_there/

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