Wednesday, October 05, 2005

"The people of New Orleans have been cheated."

From Reason, discussing the false Superbowl "Lord of the Flies" stories:

But New Orleans, I guess my last point is, I kind of feel upset. Because I have some pictures of a Dad reading stories to his kid. I have a picture of a lady who—I don't know what the hell she was thinking when she brought it—but she brought her clown suit, and make-up, and she's in full clown garb, and she's got a wig on, and a nose and everything, and she sat there for days and painted kids' faces all day long. I have 20 amazing stories of people taking care of each other for every one incident of someone stealing, or someone taking somebody's stuff, or someone trying to get into somebody else's business, or someone laying their hands on somebody.

New Orleanians have been kind of cheated, because now everybody thinks that they just turned to animals, and that there was complete lawlessness and utter abandon, when that wasn't the case. Because if there was, we would have completely lost control of the Dome. And we never did. People just kind of hung on, through the heat and through everything, until they got on a bus and left.


More at the Washington Post.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Isn't that sad? I guess I had not really thought about it that way.

I do remember years ago my father saying that people would always think the Okies were like the hicks in The Grapes of Wrath.

He felt they had been used and that their real story had never been told.

maybe this is kind of the same thing.