You, Too, Can Play the Katrina Blame Game!

Like those same politicians and pundits who blamed him for his botched effort during Katrina, Michael Brown has effectively engaged in and added to a time-honored game that has been going on since the fierce storm laid waste to the Gulf a year ago. The Hurricane Katrina Blame Game!

Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during Hurricane Katrina and undisputed scapegoat champion of the world, has had enough of people pointing fingers at him. In the wake of the New Orleans disaster and ensuing infrastructural collapse, which saw a major American city turn overnight into a dystopian John Carpenter movie, all heads turned to Brown and his organization’s botched management of the crisis.

A year has passed, and the man George W. Bush calls “Brownie,” [but the rest of us know as that dude who fucked up Katrina] Oklahoma lawyer and failed politician is hitting back. With no job in government and his reputation sullied for eternity, Brown has taken to doing what any self-respecting scapegoat would do. He has started to play a blame game of his own. Brownie’s rubber, and you—George Bush, Michael Chertoff, and Ray Nagin—are glue.

In a recent Playboy Magazine interview, Brown had this to say of his former employer’s statement that “No one anticipated the breach of the levees”:

[George W. Bush] doesn't have an incredible command of the English language. Maybe he meant “None of us really wanted this to happen.” My friends in the Republican Party––the bullies––jumped all over Clinton about parsing words. Now the president was parsing words. “Are the levees going to break?” “Are they going to top?” Who cares? We are going to have flooding in New Orleans, and we knew New Orleans was a fishbowl.

Oh, snap!

But why let them have all the fun? You, too, can play the Katrina Blame Game. It’s easy. Pick a person, concept, or inanimate object and choose a plausible reason for how and why this person, place, or thing might have been responsible for the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Here’s an example: Osama bin Laden. Reason: If the Department of Homeland Security hadn’t devoted so much manpower and money to fighting OBL’s terror network, then DOH would have responded with more speed and alacrity than they did. (You win this time, Osama!)

Here are some other good ones:

President George W. Bush––For his late response to the disaster, for not putting money into building the levees ahead of time, for being on vacation in Crawford, Texas, and for not caring about black people.

Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco––For ordering a “shoot to kill” policy on the looters.

God––For exacting revenge upon the sinful city of New Orleans.

The Media––For their portrayal of black flood victims.

The Levees––For breaking.

Government Conspiracy––Many residents who lived near the city’s 17th Street Canal, the site of the main levee rupture, claimed to hear a loud explosion moments before the flooding began, which led many to believe that the breaking of the levees was an act of government-sponsored terrorism

Play it at home or on the job, it doesn’t matter, so long as you pick a reason (any reason!) that isn’t completely ridiculous. For example, the disaster that befell New Orleans is symptomatic of the profound and persistent socioeconomic disparity that divides every American metropolis along racial lines.

No. A reason like that would be ridiculous.

(Happy Via's South Park character from flickr.)

Comments

[josephus]

Don't forget to tag horrible media reporting that happened when the eyes of the nation were fixed on New Orleans -- do you recall news reports of cannibalism, roving bands of rapists, hundreds of homicides, toxic flood waters that would kill on contact -- persisted in the weeks afterwards. The news agencies seemed so intent on scoring points off of the Bush administration that they neglected to research the real problems in New Orleans: the lack of any coordinated local response, the refusal of Louisiana to authorize military intervention, and the real reason for the levee failure.

But that isn't really what this whole thing about the anniversary of Katrina is all about, is it?

[jo ellen]

And what about federal spending on the rebuilding of New Orleans? The federal government, far from ignoring the Gulf Coast, has pledged the astonishing sum of $120 billion dollars, far more than for any previous natural disaster. Tens of billions have already poured out of the federal coffers—largely to disappear into the unreformed swamp of Louisiana political corruption.

Yes, this is about a failure of government, all right. It's about the failure of big government and the welfare state and the whole philosophy behind them. It is about the vital necessity to move away from government handouts and toward personal responsibility and private initiative. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the moral difference between self-reliance and dependence on government is ultimately the difference between life and death.

The only institution for which the press has any praise on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is, naturally enough, the press. They have spent much of this week congratulating themselves on what a marvelous job they did—which is the surest indication that they have completely missed the real story.