NPR listeners are familiar with poet Andre Codrescu, a Romanian immigrant who offers essays from his adopted home of New Orleans. His
recent essay on the legacy of Katrina is just devastating.
As Chip Scanlan at Poynter Online describes it, "With a poet's economy, Codrescu uses just 590 words to deliver an unsparing indictment of the continuing governmental failure to rescue Katrina's victims."
Katrina was just a storm, but what followed was so hideous that one year later we can still only shake our heads and vomit.
The inhabitants of New Orleans who were foolish enough to come back to the city after being screwed in a myriad of ways by their local, state and federal government have now taken refuge in mental illness. I hear a lot of my people talking to themselves without cell phones these days. I hear them praying out loud for Huey Long, Roosevelt or even Stalin and Mussolini. I see people staring at their feet and saying "Marshall Plan" or people deeply immersed in their third drink and second Xanax speaking in tongues. One guy said what's the big deal about Jefferson? I have $90,000 in my freezer, too.
Scanlan reprints the entire essay and then deconstructs the language with 11 footnotes. You can listen to the essay here.
One more passage from the essay:
I have to say this again because I still can't believe it. On July 9, 2006, FEMA, our national disaster relief agency, was advertising - let me repeat - for a chief of staff, finance director and emergency management specialist.
At this point, I think that those jobs can be filled by any three people passing by on the street with go-carts. It doesn't take but a few minutes to train anybody in New Orleans for those jobs. The chief of staff parks on high ground and goes golfing, the finance director steals all the money and hands it to his friends and the emergency management specialist tells everybody to scram.
In the space of one year, our commander in chief has evolved from a flyover disaster observer to profligate dispenser of cash.