Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
I'm sure folks here are not aware of it, but I posted a response yesterday on HuffPo to President Obama's speech in New Orleans: "Obama Speaks to New Orleans from Planet Zarg" or something like that. I've never written in a greater nimbus of white-hot fury. Basically, the President came to a city commemorating the fifth anniversary of its near-destruction by a federally-designed and -built "hurricane protection system", and he couldn't, in the welter of platitudes, find the few seconds to acknowledge that simple fact.
Of course, acknowledgment of the causation of the flood--very different from the cause of the Mississippi Gulf Coast damage, which was in fact Hurricane Katrina--would then lead to an uncomfortable question: Mr. President, what are you going to do about it?
The speech took guts to deliver in New Orleans. It would also take guts for me, after having run over your mom, to insist on delivering her eulogy without mentioning her cause of death.
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May '10
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
Good point! Of course, the government also addressed the financial crisis without mentioning its role in Fannie, Freddie, and sub-prime mortgages. So it's par for the course.
May '10
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
To be fair, the man was not personally behind the wheel! But I detected a certain fiendish delight in his seeming to dare residents of the Gulf Coast to refuse the vast federal beneficence for which he is there to both claim credit and double down. You want your precious city back? No problem, just sign here...
Jul '10
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
Oh, come on, Harry: the guy never speaks to anybody beyond his base, and that whole Corps of Engineers thing is way too boring and complicated for them.
There's no race angle, no class envy.
Besides, it goes way, way back, so it can't be blamed on Bush.
I try to resist Schadenfreude, but I do suspect you voted for him....
Edited on Aug 30, 2010 at 9:58amMay '10
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
Harry Shearer, Guest Contributor:
The speech took guts to deliver in New Orleans. It would also take guts for me, after having run over your mom, to insist on delivering her eulogy without mentioning her cause of death. ·
Well, actually, isn't the message "I'm here to comfort you because Bush deliberately ran over and murdered your mother"?
Aug '10
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
I love New Orleans, and have been going there since 1971. It's a great food city, whether you buy a beignet at Cafe du Monde, or shrimp Etouffe at Arnaud's. But there's something that's painfully obvious about it from the first, which you find out pretty quick. All the residents give you a wink if you mention it; and that is its corruption. Ah, the stories they tell!
Yellow fever was so rampant for centuries that everyone felt they lived on borrowed time. So they just said to themselves, "What the hell? Go for it!" Cronyism, graft, and nepotism are built into the city.
There used to be a U.S. Treasury mint in New Orleans, but Huey Long raided it so often, walking out with bundles of cash, that FDR was forced to close it permanently.
The multi-million dollar levee and flood control system was built over the years using many local contractors, and the Army Corps of Engineers - which was also involved - knew that much of it was either badly built, substandard, and/or inadequate. But the politics of Louisiana and the City are Byzantine; always have been owned by politics. Case closed.
May '10
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
Bravo, Harry, for raising your voice, but blindness to the limitations of those levees goes back generations. I studied coastal engineering as an engineering student 30+ years ago and the inadequacy of the New Orleans system (and the inevitability if its failure), was much discussed. The thinking amongst the engineers was that politics in general, and New Orleans politics in particular, did not mix well with good cautious engineering. No one wanted to have anything to do with it.
Dangers like a hurricane "someday" or an earthquake "someday" or the collapse of Social Security "someday" are not as compelling to the political class as an election "this fall".
Which is why your article and your film are so important. If concerned residents don't make the case for changes, who will?
Jul '10
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
"If concerned residents don't make the case for changes, who will?"
Nobody will.
It's Louisiana. Way bigger and darker than Chinatown.
Re: Obama in New Orleans: Why Not Refuse to Acknowledge the Facts?
If Harry voted for him, he should be even more lauded for his frankness. Blurting out who you think someone voted for is not frankness, it might be rudeness though.
Does Obama avoid the facts about the "hurricane protection system" for fear of doing something about it, or because it's an example of government incompetence on the eve of handing over our healthcare system to the same types of bozos, because that's what comes to mind when I think of it. No offense to Larry Harmon.
He doesn't mind talking about the causes of the oil spills. Great to have you here Harry, my friend.