Well, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has no love for the director of FEMA, and they make that known here in this editorial.
Better question, though–how did a man that couldn’t even run Arabian Quarterhorse shows get this job?
This cat’s making me think the FEMA boys should be stoned. Not stoned like ’60s stoned. I mean stoned like something biblical, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” sorta stoned.
(If you haven’t read that short story, check it later. The link directly before it is what’s most important right now.)
Look, for a while, I’d given some credence to the Bush apologists who let him slide for much of this disaster. I don’t think I can do that anymore. Between that smug attitude, his bungled appointments, and the general ineptitude of those under his command, he’s got a lot of explaining to do.
The levies breached. Can’t do anything about that. All that can be done no is to try to fix things. I’ll grant things have gotten much better, but as details come out about how things got so bad in the first place, this becomes more disturbing. If FEMA turned supplies away from the city the day before the storm hit, then all that talk about the mayor not asking for enough seems moot. He coulda asked for John Wayne, George C. Scott, and Jim Brown and the Dirty Dozen, and that wouldn’t have mattered, really.
The problems can be explicated in ways worse than saying George Bush doesn’t care about black people–which, really, was a great big “duh”. It’s that George Bush is wholly inept and unconcerned with domestic issues (you can talk about foreign ones on your own). Even if he cared about black folks, I’m not sure that would make things any better.
Is an indifferent fuckup any better than a passionate one? Tough call.