The conservative NY Times seems to have found itself yet another right-wing/administration apologist. In what I can only call a brutally cruel and slanted bit of Drudge-ish reportage, Shaila Dewan castigates the victims of Katrina as - and I quote - "old, unhealthy, delusional, mentally challenged, addicted, illiterate, senile." Of FEMA - which abandoned these people in trailer parks for 3 1/2 years only to hand off responsibility for their final placement to others, she is, shall we say, excessively kind.
FEMA, which ultimately is a disaster-response agency, not a social service department, endured years of blistering criticism for its failure to understand that many New Orleans residents needed more than just a roof over their heads after the hurricane. The agency now is quick to admit that other agencies are better equipped to handle persistent social ills. Its job in cases like that of Ms. August, FEMA officials say, is limited to getting her housed.
Still, in its awkward fashion, the agency designed a gradual transition for residents from the parks and government care, offering an intermediate step of a 30-day hotel stay. After residents spend the first month in an apartment, the Disaster Housing Assistance Program, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, would kick in, paying the full rent until March 1, 2009.
(emphasis added)
So after the fact, after years of promises from Bush on down, Michael Chertoff has retroactively defined his agency's role at the absolute minimum level, absolved it of responsibility for its own ineffectiveness and racist behavior, shoved the mess off onto churches and private NGO's, and then got himself a tame propagandist to sweep it all under the rug for him - in print.
The Bush Administration, with Brownie's and Chertoff's invaluable assistance, succeeded in using Katrina as an excuse to make New Orleans a rich, white playground by shifting poorer black residents to other Louisiana cities and even other states, and the NYT thinks poor FEMA has been abused and misunderstood. If this is journalism, Drudge ought to be getting a Pulitzer Prize any day now. The only legitimate question in the article wasn't even asked by Dewan but by a Catholic nun trying to do what FEMA refused to do - find places for FEMA's victims to live.
“The question I keep coming back to,” Sister Judith said, “is why is there still so much need?”
Why, indeed? It is a question Dewan doesn't understand much less attempt to answer. To her, the problem is crystal clear: they'd become dependent on govt welfare. Shades of Newt Gingrich.
As the deadline loomed, the approximately 450 families still in the parks responded in different ways. Some finally opened the door when the FEMA workers knocked, or boarded a van hired by Sister Judith to hunt for apartments. Others broke down in tears, became entangled in delusional schemes or did nothing, passively waiting for one level of government to hand them off to another. FEMA officials said they would not forcibly remove those who remained.
(emphasis added)
Kind of them, wasn't it? After all, it's not like it was their fault that these people weren't allowed back into their homes in NO.
Oh, wait. It was.
While the rest of the country moves significantly to the left, having been hip-deep in the results of living in a right-wing-fantasy-driven playground for a good 7 years now, the press - including the NYT - continues to maintain its position as a corporate mouthpiece making the most punishingly agonizing excuses for greed, incompetence, and the deliberate prosecution of class and race wars against the weak and powerless, the black and brown, the workers and the unemployed.
This is beyond unacceptable. It's criminal, and it's a bad sign of what we can expect in the future if, say, Obama goes against expectations and actually tries to change something when the corpo's like it the way it is.
The NYT will send Shaila Dewan after him.
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