By: Mary Lyon

Congratulations, America. We’re now an official member of the Third World. We not only got a chance to walk in the other guy’s shoes – something many of us never feel here in the well-fed, well-accessorized United States – but we also got to taste, swim through, and suffer through it. And those of us who did not actually do the tasting, swimming and suffering got to wallow in the shame of it. But oh, make no mistake about it, we’re safer now.

By now, it’s common knowledge how abysmally and lackadaisically the federal government performed. By now, too, it’s also quite clear what they’re working hardest to do. Not necessarily attend to the job a federal government is there to do in the first place – look after the common good of its citizens, especially when they’re facing mortal danger – but rather to slough off blame on somebody else lower down. They learned their lessons well from Abu Ghraib.

They had FOUR YEARS. FOUR YEARS to prepare for a national calamity. FOUR YEARS. FOUR YEARS since September 11th, 2001. FOUR YEARS to anticipate all kinds of horrible stuff that might happen, in which there would be a common bottom line – Americans in mortal danger, at risk of life and limb. If Hurricane Katrina didn’t qualify for that, I’m at a loss to think what would.

But, of course, we DID have a template. The boss off on a long vacation. In this case, too, his inner circle also taking a cue from him after a pattern set in stone over several years – they scattered to the four winds – Dick Cheney to Wyoming. Andrew Card to Maine. Top communications advisor Nicolle Devenish to Greece to get married (taking lots of other White House staffers with her), and Contradicta to Broadway and to shoe-shopping on glittering Fifth Avenue in New York City. I guess she’s a fully-realized courtesan in this imperial Louis-the-Sixteenth-style court. Ferragamo’s motto, after all, states that “every woman should be shod like a princess.” And while the “serfs” in New Orleans were drowning and dying, Contradicta’s Queen, Laura, was shuttled off about 100 miles away from New Orleans, to Lafayette, Louisiana, where neither flooding nor death were nearly so serious, so she could testify to America that things really weren’t as bad as what you’re seeing on TV. Like with her husband, the careless King, hungry evacuees were assembled to present a nice backdrop for Her Majesty’s arrival, so she could be viewed as Lady Bountiful, bringing food to the starving, but they were kept waiting in their long lines, holding their empty plates, because Milady took longer than expected to get there.

http://www.acadiananow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050902/NEWS05/50902009/1075

http://www.ktvotv3.com/global/story.asp?s=3801662&ClientType=Printable

As for the King himself, at least he didn’t say “let ‘em eat cake.” He thoughtfully kept the cake for himself, sharing it with court flunky John McCain at a photo op a couple of time zones away. Midweek, by the time His Majesty got off his duff, called off his vacation, and ordered the royal jet to swing low over New Orleans on his way back to his main palace, who knows how many needless deaths there were? When His Lordship finally arrived on this latter-day Ground Zero, funny enough, with the cavalry now shown rolling into town behind him, the irony even made media toady Jack Cafferty on CNN mutter aloud – “you don’t think that was a coincidence, do you?” I can hear it now: “my kingdom for a photo-op!” Meanwhile, local officials – who are being set up as the fall guys for this gross dereliction of duty from the throne room, were pointing out that the National Guard did arrive a little earlier, only they parked, got out, headed to their rec rooms, and cooled their heels playing cards while the underfunded, understaffed, underequipped hometown cops struggled in vain to rescue people: Here’s just a slice of that coverage, in case you missed it:

New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley launched a bitter attack on the federal response to the disaster though he praised the way the evacuation was eventually handled.

His remarks added to controversy over the government handling of the crisis as New Orleans descended into anarchic chaos after Katrina swamped the city’s flood defences. Thousands are feared dead in the disaster.

National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, defended his force saying it had been slow to move into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city police force.

Riley said that for the first three days after Monday’s storm the police and fire departments and some volunteers had been alone rescuing people.

“We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance,” he told AFP in an interview.

Riley went on: “We have been fired on with automatic weapons. We still have some thugs around. My biggest disappointment is with the federal government and the National Guard.

“The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in and went to sleep.

“For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards. I understand why we are not winning the war in Iraq if this is what we have.”

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2005/September/theworld_September101.xml&section=theworld

If this is how our government responds to a national calamity – when civilians and amateurs watching the Weather Channel days earlier could have predicted what was going to happen – what can we expect when the next terror-related crisis occurs? Were they slow on the federal end because this didn’t have some sinister-looking, bearded jihadi at the controls? The ever-popular court jester Grover “shrink the government so small you can drown it in the bathtub” Norquist tried hard to point out that Democrats lower-down, like Louisiana’s governor, are to blame. Well, he got his bathtub alright, and there WAS a whole lot of drowning, for sure. But Grover, dear, you and your fellow limited-government fans forget something: THIS is the kind of thing we have a federal government for, in the first place. THIS is what is supposed to be THE SUPREME SPECIALTY AND PERVIEW of the federal government. THIS is what you have a federal government for. The feds are the ones who are supposed to protect the citizenry and handle all the big security issues and large-scale problems. That’s their job. That’s why they get the big bucks and the keys to the royal jet and the entitlement to the summer palaces and king-sized vacations. This was no job for the lower rungs.

The word “disgrace” was bandied about, a LOT, last week. And for good reason. It WAS a disgrace. And it appears to be trailing a whole lot of additional fallout disgrace behind it. The hyenas are yapping on overdrive, trying to spin this away from their King. I’m not sure how successful they’ll be, however, when court apologist-fops like MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson are taken aback by interviewing guys like Ivor Van Heerden. Van Heerden is the man who presented a eerily Katrina-like scenario LAST YEAR to FEMA and other federal officials, and was almost literally laughed out of the room. You know, the scenario that hapless Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff insists never happened. Or, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, getting wide-eyed with incredulity while interviewing Clinton FEMA chief James Lee Witt – who reminded that FEMA’s funds were actually cut back AFTER 9/11 – Cooper was aghast, and had to repeat that claim himself to make sure he had heard it correctly. Perhaps the Cafftertys, Carlsons, and Coopers won’t be so eager to join the cover-up chorus in the royal court, and will join those of us who have complained for years that the emperor is running around naked all the time. Perhaps not even Fox “News’s” Shepard Smith and a weeping Geraldo Rivera, arguing on camera with that guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-Vanity, back in his safe, dry, air-conditioned studio in a hurricane-free state, who was trying to provide cover for the White House, putting this in perspective as a mere “small distribution issue.”

They had FOUR YEARS to prepare for something like this. They had all the big-ticket, heavy-hitting, heavy artillery imaginable to bring to bear on a crisis the size and scope of this one. THIS is what they’re supposed to be set up for. THIS is why we wound up with a Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department to begin with. THIS is why all the King’s horses and all the King’s men were reorganized and deputized and given so much authority and money and free reign. THIS is what the National Guard is trained for, and what people volunteer for the National Guard to do. The National Guard belongs HERE AT HOME, protecting the Homeland Security of the Gulf states instead of being mired in a war based on lies in Iraq, where it is clearly not doing any of us in America any good. For heaven’s sakes, the Gulf states are red states. You’d think they’d get first priority in any event, just because.

George W. Bush sat on his royal behind and fiddled, or in this case, played guitar, while New Orleans drowned. Because he’s the one guy who, in all his life, has NEVER had any inkling, or opportunity, to understand how the other half lives. His privileged, coddled existence where everything’s always been taken care of for him and served to him on silver platters and fixed for him when he broke it and covered up for him when he screwed it up simply did not prepare him to respond to this. He doesn’t know how. He’s never, in his whole life, learned to do anything different. The only way he’s been able to relate to New Orleans at all is through vague memories of drunken orgies around town when he was “young and irresponsible.” While the rest of us, around the country got a bitter taste all week of what life in the Third World is really like, George never did. Even his brief visit to the stricken area was actually to a safe spot that had been cleaned up a little, so neither he nor the cameras could see the death, the destruction, and the sickness and suffering around him. It makes me wish that the King and all his court could spend a few hours in the men’s room at the New Orleans Convention Center – and THEN come out and make their pronouncements. Then they can bask in the adulation of all their friends who still want to tell us how our fearless “leader” is keeping us safe.

Visualize IMPEACHMENT.
Then go DO something about it.

Mary Lyon spent the first 25 years of her adult life as a broadcast journalist, at Los Angeles radio stations KRTH-FM, KFWB-AM, KHJ-AM and KLOS-FM, the NBC, ABC, and RKO Radio Networks, plus KTLA-TV. She retired from day-to-day broadcasting in 1996, after covering Hollywood for nine years in radio, TV, and print, for the Associated Press. She wrote and illustrated "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood," and is presently at work on a new craft book for kids and friends. A lifelong Democrat who began her political involvement in the Student Coalition for Humphrey-Muskie, and Tom Bradley's first L.A. Mayoral campaign, Mary currently is a weekly columnist for www.democrats.us - from the Left.