Best of the Web Today - September 12, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Ship of Fools
As we've heard ad nauseam the past couple of weeks, the Katrina disaster raises serious questions about race in America. Just how serious became clear Saturday afternoon, when Fox News Channel's Alicia Acuna conducted a live interview with a frustrated, foul-mouthed New Orleans evacuee in Houston. Blogger Ian Schwartz has the unexpurgated video, and we have the expurgated transcript:
Acuna: [There's] a lot of frustration, and a lot of it stems from the confusion over what a lot of the evacuees have been told is going to happen with regard to their federal assistance coming in. And I have a gentleman standing here with me who helps illustrate that picture. He has chosen not to give his name, he is from New Orleans, and he only says he is for the people.
So if you can explain to me, what has happened with your debit card? You're having a lot of problems, right?
Man: Well, for one thing, you know, they're not activating. You know, they're giving us these cards, and they're not activating these cards, and they're giving us a runaround. Then when we call, you know, for the, you know, to find out if the card is activated, they're giving us the runaround. And they send us back to Red Cross, and we go to Red Cross--nobody knows anything, you know.
I mean, c'mon now, f---, you know, excuse my French, you know, but anyway, you know, we're out here, we're stranded, you know, we don't have any goddamn thing, nobody's not [sic] trying to help us. FEMA is a fake and a fraud. Red Cross is a fake and a fraud, you know. Where do we go from here? I mean, who should we depend on? If we can't depend on our own federal government, who can we depend on?
Acuna: The FEMA cards were supposed to be $2,000 apiece--
Man: Two thousand dollars.
Acuna: --and you received a FEMA card?
Man: I only received $700. Seven hundred dollars, and they cut my card off.
Acuna: And when you asked them why that was, what were you told?
Man: They don't know. Nobody knows.
Acuna: OK, thank you very much.
Man: Do you know?
Acuna: I do not know, no.
Man: Well, find out for me, and you tell me.
Acuna: OK, thank you. And actually, Bob [Sellers, the anchorman], one thing I can tell you--we talk about this confusion, and there are quite a few reporters who have been kind of confused during those news conferences. And we actually have direct access to a lot of these officials. And FEMA, in all fairness, has said there are going to be glitches. They understand that there are problems. They have said that everyone is going to get assistance that qualifies; however, they're still working it out. They keep reiterating to us that this is a work in progress. Back to you.
Sellers: Alicia, is that gentleman still there by any chance?
Acuna: He is still here.
Sellers: Could you ask him what he wants? What is he looking for?
Acuna: Sure, hold on one second.
The anchor in New York would like to know--his name is Bob--he would like to know what it is that you would like to happen. What do you want?
Man: What I would like to happen? I would like for them to give us at least $20,000 apiece so we can, you know, get our life together. You know, we didn't ask to come on that bus, slave. It's like a slave ship. It's just like, you know, back in history, you know, they put us on a slave ship. They separated us from our family. They did it--you know, just modern-day slavery, you know? Just give us what the f--- we deserve.
Sellers: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa! Hold on! Hold on! That's, that's, that's enough. I mean, you've made your point, sir. We thank you very much for being with us. But Alicia--
Man: It's like a slave ship.
Sellers: --we know there's frustration there, and a lot of these folks have gone through so much, and we don't want to, you know, minimize or trivialize that. But we still have certain responsibility here in terms of what we're doing as far as broadcasting.
The Fox people seem to have missed the first obscenity, which the man uttered under his breath. Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words, even when two of them are the F-word, so take a look at this:
Looks just like a slave ship, doesn't it? Well, except that on a slave ship, he probably wouldn't have his arm around a white woman.
World Doesn't End; Angry Left Hardest Hit
Hurricane Katrina's death toll "has climbed past 400, making it one of the deadliest hurricanes in the United States in a century," Reuters reports:
Louisiana raised its official death count to 197 on Sunday. Mississippi, the other hardest hit state, had 211 confirmed killed. There were also fatalities, though much lower numbers, in Alabama and Florida.
The number is likely to climb as searchers find more bodies, but the estimates of 10,000 dead that some officials were bandying plainly were far too high. It's even realistic to hope that the toll doesn't top 1,000.
Believe it or not, reaction from the Angry Left is mixed. Josh Marshall calls the apparent lower death toll "possibly encouraging news." But Vanity Fair's James Wolcott saw in the assumed higher death toll an opportunity to diminish a crime against humanity:
Any number substantially higher than 3,000 dead presents a political and symbolic dilemma for the most avid advocates of the War on Terror. . . . Since 9/11, "3000" has been elevated to a sacred, symbolic number in political discourse. . . . If 10,000 deaths amount to but a drop of blood in the abattoir of time, 3000 is an even smaller drop, and once you begin to shrug off large numbers of dead to the caprices of fate, striking a militant pose over a smaller number becomes even harder. . . .
Whatever the final numbers are from Hurricane Katrina, it will be harder for the WOT propagandists to ritualistically invoke the "3000 dead" to the same sonorous effect.
A week and a half ago, we likened the opportunistic spirit in which the Angry Left was attacking President Bush to that which animated looters stealing TV sets. Some of our readers thought this was an invidious comparison, and after reading Wolcott's post, we think they may have a point. Possibly we were too harsh on looters.
The Thought Is What Counts
Here's a heartwarming Pentagon press release, dateline Taji, Iraq:
Iraqi soldiers serving at Taji military base collected 1,000,000 Iraqi dinars for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Iraqi Col. Abbas Fadhil, Iraqi base commander, presented the money to U.S. Col. Paul D. Linkenhoker, Taji Coalition base commander, at a Sept. 5 staff meeting.
"We are all brothers," said Abbas. "When one suffers tragedy, we all suffer their pain."
A million dinars isn't a lot of money; the U.S. equivalent is about $680. But this act of charity should chasten those who think that somehow Katrina shows that Iraqis are unworthy of America's humanitarian attentions.
And People Complained the Katrina Rescue Was Slow?
"Bronze-Age Boat Sailors Are Rescued"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 9
Another Pro-American Victory
Not so long ago, the Angry Left was exulting in the election victories of anti-American, or at least stridently anti-Bush, candidates in places like Germany, South Korea and Spain. They've been relatively quiet for the past year or so, in the wake of the re-elections of Australia's John Howard, Britain's Tony Blair and of course our own George W. Bush. Add another to the list: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, whose Liberal Democratic Party was re-elected in a landslide over the weekend. Reports the Associated Press:
The LDP's final tally stood at 296 seats in the lower house, public broadcaster NHK reported, well above the 241 seats needed for a majority and the 249 seats it held when Koizumi dissolved the chamber last month. Optimism about the results sent Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei stock index surging 1.8 percent in early trading.
The opposition party, known as the Democrats, had threatened to withdraw Japanese troops from Iraq. Obviously this election was not primarily "about" America, but that doesn't mean we can't be delighted with the result.
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Chief Justice-designate John Roberts's confirmation hearings opened today with set-piece bloviations from the 18 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They may not be as entertaining as Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean's remarks on CNN's "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer Friday:
Blitzer: Let's talk about a comment you made. "In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina we have a clear, moral responsibility to do a better job of ensuring social and economic justice for every American, and there is still far too much that we don't know about John Roberts' record and beliefs on these critical issues."
You're making a connection between Katrina and the confirmation hearings of John Roberts, which begin on Monday. And I'm not exactly sure what the point is.
Dean: My point is that John Roberts has a record. John Roberts appears to be a wonderful, decent family person, but, again, we get back to the question about whether you really care and whether you have compassion. It's not enough to say you care. It's what you've done.
John Roberts's legal career has been about taking away every protection for young girls and women who want to participate in sports, for African-Americans and Hispanics, who want the equal same right to vote as everybody else, for taking away for women who believe they should determine what kind of health care they have, instead of having politicians do it.
His entire legal career appears to be about making sure those folks don't have the same rights everybody else does. That's probably not the right thing to do two weeks after a disaster, where certain members of society clearly did not have the same protections that everybody else did because of their circumstances. Americans are fair people and they want a sense of justice. I know Judge Roberts loves the law. I'm not sure he loves the American people.
But the Conservative Bloggers Who Support the Gay Judge Roberts still support Roberts. That's good enough for us.
Homer Nods
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff previously served as a judge on the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, not the Fourth Circuit as we said in an item Friday (since corrected).
Also, an ambiguously punctuated sentence left some readers confused about the Viet Dinh chronology. He was born in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1968. He came to America as a refugee in 1978 after his country was invaded and conquered by communists.
All Work and No Pay
Picketers have been standing outside a Wal-Mart in Henderson, Nev., holding signs protesting the discount chain's alleged maltreatment of workers. But these people aren't protesting because they believe in what they're doing. They're getting paid for it, albeit at a niggardly rate, reports the Las Vegas Weekly:
They're not union members; they're temp workers employed through Allied Forces/Labor Express by the union--United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). They're making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it's 104 [degrees] F, and they're protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.
Hmm, now we know why unions favor a legally mandated minimum wage. It prevents anyone form hiring even cheaper picketers to picket the picketers.
Dog Does Not Bark; Man Not Bit
"Soldier Not Killed in Action; Kin Not Told"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 10
Look Ma, No Head!
"Cycling Body Says It Has No Doping Evidence Against Lance Armstrong"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 9
Warm Medicine Is Better Anyway
"Senate Moves to Limit Sale of Cold Medicine"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 9
Clothes Make the Man
"Sex Suit at Yeshiva U"--headline, New York Post, Sept. 12
Life Imitates 'South Park'
"Naw dude, independent films are those black and white hippie movies. They're always about gay cowboys eating pudding."--Cartman, "Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls," an episode of "South Park," originally aired Aug. 19, 1998
"Ang Lee's tale of the homosexual love between two cowboys set in the conservative West of the 1960s won the Venice Film Festival's top award Saturday."--MSN Movies, Sept. 10, 2005
Six-Finger Discount
Here's an update on a story we followed some months back: Anna Ayala and her husband, Jaime Placencia, "pleaded guilty Friday to all charges related to planting a human fingertip in a bowl of Wendy's chili in a scheme to extort money from the fast food restaurant chain," the Associated Press reports. She could go to prison for as long as 10 years; he, up to 13.
Doctor Do-Little
London's Daily Telegraph reports on an interview Prince Charles gave to "Songs of Praise," a religious program on the BBC:
"I just think we need to remember that we are a part of Nature and not apart from it, which I think has been one of the great problems of the 20th century. It's a balance, it seems to me, we have to try to find, and I just feel we have got out of balance." In a comment that might well have been aimed at the current government, he added: "And this business of reflection and action: you have to have both, you can't just endlessly act. . . ."
He went on: "And my grandmother, I've never forgotten. When we were small - my sister and I--she used to take us down, stand on the cliff there, and we'd sing to seals. It was absolutely riveting. We'd sing Over the Sea to Skye and it was very interesting. These heads would bob up and they'd start coming closer."
If seals are sentient, they no doubt thought: Who is this cuckoo? Little did they know he was the prince of Whales. |
