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I know, LynneSin tried one yesterday -- but I thought this week deserved the extra special touch that only an ex-New Orleanian (three years or so in the early '90s) can bring.
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The phrase "Biblical proportions" has been uttered so often this week that I thought the Miss Galilee pageant must be underway. Floods, fire, famine, pestilence -- it’s all there. But to my knowledge, nowhere in the Bible are people threatened with a plague of right-wing buttheads who never seem to miss an opportunity to humiliate and degrade the already suffering survivors of Katrina. Cataloguing and ranking them is a Herculean task as daunting in its own way as, say, getting food and water to victims of the Asian tsunami -- oh, wait, that they were able to do in only two days! Very well, then, here goes nothing:
1. "Assclown" Michael Brown. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Kind of like "Downtown" Julie Brown -- and there are similarities: Julie Brown has an empty head, and Colorado horse breeder turned FEMA head Michael Brown is an empty suit. Someone asked him about the people stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center. His response: "There are people in the Convention Center, too?" Indeed there were, Assclown -- at least 15,000 of them -- and there had been since at least the early morning before that exchange took place. I know this because I looked it up on the Internets. Don’t you feel safer knowing that the guy in charge of all Federal emergency management couldn't or didn't do that? Well, don’t you?
2. George W. Bush. What's a suitably presidential response to perhaps the greatest disaster in our country's history? The world will never know, because we don’t happen to have a President right now. What we have instead, apparently, is a professional fundraiser for the Republican Party. While the fate of the Gulf Coast hung in the balance, there he was, schmoozing at a ritzy fundraiser near San Diego. Does the phrase "fiddled while Rome burned" ring a bell? Well, Georgie Boy tried his best, but he couldn't figure out which side of the bow went on the strings, so he had to settle for playing guitar while New Orleans drowned.
Then when he finally showed up in the Big Easy for his mandatory cringe-inducing photo op, the long-awaited food and water just happened to arrive at the same time! Coincidence? I think not -- and neither does the Red Cross, which reports that it was ordered not to bring relief supplies in the night before! Let me see if I've got this straight: they were not allowed to bring in food and water to people who had been starving and dehydrating for days because it might have detracted from Bush's photo op?! Words fail me.
3. Dennis Hastert. Actually, the roly-poly Speaker of the House isn't alone in wondering out loud whether it's worthwhile to rebuild New Orleans, though I’d certainly expect better from the man who's in charge of the body that will ultimately have to approve the billions that will be required. Hastert did, however, raise the act of political expediency to an art form. Faced with mounting criticism of his lily-livered stance, Hastert did just what you'd expect him to do: he flip-flopped. The very next day, he declared that he would not rest until the historic city had been rebuilt. Better stock up on the No-Doz, Denny, because thanks largely to your heroic efforts in cutting funding for levee maintenance, it's gonna be months rather than weeks.
The ultimate irony is that Hastert only attained his eminent post as Speaker because the Repukes' first choice, after Newt Gingrich fell into utter disgrace, was embroiled in a sex scandal. You're not gonna believe this: it was Bob Livingston, from the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, La. So at this time of national crisis, instead of the House being led by someone who, while still definitely a Repuke, is actually from the affected area and understands it, we're stuck with this lying rotten sack of shit, all because of a sex scandal. Who would have ever thought that a sex scandal could drag the country down like that? Um, wait a minute…
4. (tie) Repent America and Rev. Fred Phelps. If you've ever been on Bourbon Street at night, you’ve seen some poor soul carrying a cross and preaching to the throngs to turn away from their wicked and sinful ways. But none of these itinerant street preachers ever thought to preach against New Orleans itself. No, that dubious honor goes to Repent America, those wonderful folks from Philly whose bizarre version of brotherly love has earned them a restraining order forbidding them from harassing gay people. Repent America’s "Christian" response to this unimaginable tragedy? They're cool with it! Never mind that thousands may be dead, tens of thousands more are trapped in fetid convention halls at the end of their collective rope -- that’s okay, as long as those ho-mo-sexules don't get to have Southern Decadence, the gay festival that had been scheduled for Labor Day weekend. Makes you wonder: Who would Jesus torment?
Not to be outdone is the Rev. Fred Phelps, whose unceasing hatred and vitriol has actually gotten his "God Hates Fags" web site classified as a forbidden hate site by at least one Internet firewall. Just when you think Phelps can't possibly sink any lower, he comes up with another doozy. After 9/11 it was "God Hates America". Then somehow we got to "God Hates The Troops" because, um, because they fight for a country that has gay people in it? And now? "Thank God For Katrina"! Yup: (warning: extreme vileness and hatred ahead; click off now if you’re sensitive to that) "New Orleans, symbol of America, seen for what it is: a putrid, toxic, stinking cesspool of fag fecal matter". My goodness, it does sometimes seem as though Phelps' descriptions of homosexuality are rather graphic, at least as much so as anything you might see in the Faubourg Marigny. Why might that be, I wonder?
If only he had stopped at the "New Orleans, symbol of America" part... say, has anyone registered www.godhatesfascists.com yet?
5. Bill O'Reilly. Did you know that Fats Domino is a criminal? Or that in New Orleans, three-month-old babies have criminal records as long as your arm (or at least theirs)? It's true! -- or at least as true as anything else that comes out of O'Really?’s mouth. He said, out loud, in public, that everyone who stayed behind in New Orleans was a criminal, that they were afraid to leave because they had a record. Gee, Bill, I wonder if any falafel stands were blown away in the storm?
But the pugnacious pathological liar wasn't done yet. He brazenly asserted that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (a Democrat, of course) was to blame for the miserable failure of the relief effort, because she had never asked for Federal troop support. Once again, O'Really? was factually correct -- as long as "never" means "not until August 28th", which is when Gov. Blanco did in fact make a formal written request for Federal troops.
6. Associated Press. "Finders keepers, looters black" appears to be the new slogan at the once-proud wire service. Two nearly identical pictures of flood victims carrying away stuff that didn't belong to them -- but two very different captions. One was "looting" while the other "found" the supplies. The difference? It's right there in stark black and white: the "looter" was black while the "finder" was white. They couldn't have better illustrated the racism that underlies so much of the response (or lack thereof) to this tragedy if they had tried.
7. George W. Bush (again) So how does the alleged leader of the free world unwind after his whirlwind tour of unspeakable disaster? With a nice relaxing round of golf, of course. It’s only fair: after all, he did cut his five-week vacation short by two whole days just because the entire Gulf Coast -- or as he put it, "Gulf Coach" -- was facing Armageddon. Remember him during last year's vacation, while our troops were fighting and dying in the giant sand trap that is Iraq, smirking from a golf cart and saying, "Hey, look at this drive!"? Looks like you hooked this one into the water hazard, Georgie.
8. Katrina Scam Artists. Cities all over the South have experienced a surge in population in the days since Katrina struck. Looks like someplace else may be getting an influx soon -- someplace where it's even hotter than in Baton Rouge or Houston. I’m talking, of course, about Hell. That's where the people -- and I use the term loosely -- who have been posing as representatives of relief agencies in order to defraud the generous public will be headed. Hope they're not overdressed...
The pressure now appears to have equalized such that the flood of conservative idiocy from outside has crested. That means we can fill the final two slots with New Orleanians who have gone over to the dark side. Come to think of it, I have at least a nodding acquaintance with both of these individuals, and they've always been on the dark side!
9. Rev. Bill Shanks. Once again, the "Christian" community is apparently fine with all this massive suffering. In this case, longtime New Orleans-area clinic attacker Bill Shanks is grateful that "at last, New Orleans is abortion-free". I gather Bill prefers the babies to be born and then die from starvation or dehydration. Then again, this is the man who once called a group of clinic defenders "baby bloodsucking vampire lesbian whores" -- including yours truly, who is male!
Tip: If you’re ever defending a clinic that Shanks and his crew are attacking, and you're male, there's an easy way to get his goat: flirt with him. All I did was blow him one little kiss, just to be puckish, and he went absolutely ballistic. I mean Ray Nagin ballistic. "Ewww! You probably would!" Actually, no, Bill, I wouldn't. If I'm ever gonna give it up for a man, which I doubt, it will most certainly not be for one who raises his clinic hits to a frenzied satanic fever pitch only when a white woman approaches the clinic, while his lackeys generally don't harass the African American clients until they‘re on their way out.
10. Jacqueline Clarkson. I've been waiting for more than a decade to unload on the prissy little pill who, thanks to a Texas-size feat of gerrymandering, represents the French Quarter and environs on the New Orleans City Council, though her political base is on the mostly white, conservative West Bank of the Mississippi. This week Jackie's lifelong dream came true: she made it into national news articles! "The French Quarter is under attack", she screeched. Well, to be fair, many sections of New Orleans were under attack at the time, notably the hospitals, although none of them are in the French Quarter. Then again, there are black people in those sections of town, so Jackie probably couldn't find them even with a GPS system. What was actually going on in the Quarter was looting, that is, people breaking in to deserted stores and stealing stuff, not an "attack". Take a chill pill, Jackie.
Then again, what can one expect from someone who ran a runoff campaign against an openly gay candidate with the slogan, "Traditional Values Make The Difference"? (Translation: You better not vote for the other guy 'cause he's a faggot.) Disclaimer: As you may have guessed, I worked on the campaign of the openly gay candidate, Larry Bagneris Jr., who is one of the most inspiring political speakers I have ever heard and who I truly, deeply hope is okay.
Dishonorable mention: Condi Rice shopped 'til N.O. dropped, and Laura Bush kindly showed us how well things are going in Lafayette, La., which was not hit by the hurricane.
That’s all for now. See you next week, uh, well, in a few months anyway!
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