Katrina Headlines XXVI
Written byPosted on September 2, 2005
Filed Under Katrina
- For those looking for alternative coverage, the BBC is keeping a blog. Horrible first-hand reports of people left to die in rest homes and a man outside the Superdome screaming, “This is America, why are we in this situation?”
- A lot of them are gone now, but new ones continue to crop up. People are posting sex-for-shelter ads (”Women with large breasts only,” “Must be self-starter,” “Send photos first.”) on the New Orleans Craig’s List site. MeFi thread. Interestingly, there seems to be a double standard for women posting similar messages.
- Storm chasers catch video of Katrina.
- Craig Giesecke isn’t too impressed by FEMA.
- Daily Kos: “This is not politics. This is not partisanship. This is unforgivable.”
- Images from Plaquemines Parish.
- Hastert: “It looks like that place could be bulldozed.” Electric Mist ain’t happy.
- Fats Domino found.
- Bush cuts delayed flood control work. (Source: Reuters)
- Oliver Willis has video inside the Convention Center: Dead babies, people without food or support for four days, all doing what they were asked.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Well, now that we have a real disaster on our hands it’s become painfully obvious what these morons have done to our country. Of course, if you wanted to see the warning signs of the decay that Bush has wrought, they were there to be seen, but this hurricane has made it so that only the willfully blind can miss it now.
This is what happens when you elect a bunch of people whose common belief is that there can never be too little government.
Yeah,amen to what Scott said
Without a duobt, Bush is the most vile President this country has ever had.
Herbert Hoover’s inhuman cluelessness about the Depression was previously the high watermark of presidential disgrace. But I think that Bush’s actions represent the new cesspool. History will not be kind to Bush’s behavior. Where Hoover’s fiasco involved poverty and jobs and lives forever grinded into the nose of an economic clusterfuck, he did not willingly allow people to die like this. Here, we have lives being lost, babies dying, children getting raped, a populace doing exactly what they have been asked to do being left without food, water, rescue and support — except, of course, by the generosity of individuals and corporations. And an utter refusal to accept outside aid, because this motherfucker is a cowboy who can never be wrong.
If that isn’t a crime or a midemeanor under the U.S. Constitution, I don’t know what is. In a just world, such rampant irresponsibility would call for an impeachment hearing. But that will not happen. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Rice — all of whom have never known a life without a hot meal — will all come out of this unscathed. Unless of course this is the tipping ponit that gets the nation to wake up.