“Nature has done what the Civil War couldn’t do,” writes author Anne Rice in a New York Times op-ed this Sunday morning. The drowning of New Orleans has laid “this strange and beautiful city” to waste, she laments, “with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.”
“Do you know what it means to lose New Orleans?” she asks in the piece’s title. Her fury swiftly mounts as the op-ed gets under way. Where was the rest of the country as her city went under? Did Americans have no sense of the gem they were losing?
Citing New Orleans’ history as a melting pot, a welcoming and tolerant port city, one that, even in slavery days, boasted a large “prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen,” she contends that the early coexistence of blacks and whites forged New Orleans’ special open-minded character:
The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city “the Big Easy” because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it’s not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man’s music, or the music of the oppressed.
Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.
As the city’s most celebrated native daughter, Rice had herself contributed to this joy, as well as the tourist industry, 
when she re-imagined the area’s swampy, bayou atmospherics in a series of blockbuster — and heavily gay-themed — Vampire Chonicles.
New Orleans was more than a backdrop, though; it was the very soul — a damned soul — of these hypnotic novels, drawing on the city’s Creole roots, particularly its voodoo-tinged tradition of "death celebrations" — those jazz funerals where horns and trombones lead a procession down the center of the street, the mourners at first swaying, then breaking into umbrella-swinging dances as the band picks up the tempo but never really loses its bluesy funk.
“I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end, " Rice asserts in a sudden lull that comes near the middle of piece — like the grim, strangely calm eye of a hurricane. "I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along…."
All at once the winds pick up, and she recount the events of those first four, completely abandoned days. While our president and his clueless ministers told us once again that everything was progressing well as everything went to Hell, Rice asks:
And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees.
And it’s true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? …
..To my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.
Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.
Rice seems to believe that citizens should have risen up and filled in for an absent government — an odd and depressingly desperate position that may be due to the stress of seeing the facts on the ground, of reporters bluntly dropping their professional poise to become frantic, feverish advocates for the sick and dying.
In a country where small-government Republicans cut social services to the bone, imagining that churches and charities will take up the slack, where bridges and levees go unmended so the wealthy can hold on to untaxed dollars, where disengaged politicians gas-off with shiny little flags on their lapels and Support Our Troops refrigerator-magnets on their bumpers, we’re all living in New Orleans now.
And we, Anne, are you.
[And there was this, an open letter to the President from the Times-Picayune, the New Orleans paper of record -- Ed. ]
Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, “What is not working, we’re going to make it right.”
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.
Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.
How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.
Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.
Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.
Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a “Today” show story Friday morning.
Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.
We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.
Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.
It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?
State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: “Buses! And gas!” Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, “We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day.”
Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.
Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, “You’re doing a heck of a job.”
That’s unbelievable.
There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.
No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.
Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.
When you do, we will be the first to applaud.
(http://tinyurl.com/8blms)
thank you for both, NC
The arrogance and ignorance of Mr. Bush/Condi Rice/FEMA/Michael Brown in the interviews they’ve all given, towing a party line that “help was on it’s way” nearly drove me off the road.
Condi was taking in a show and shopping for shoes and Pres. Bush was playing GEE-TAR on his ranch… on vacation. Fiddling while Rome burns, anyone?
I’ve gotten phone calls and letters from other countries begging me to explain what in the world is going on with our government. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Republicans!
The whole lot of them should be fired, impeached or should step down. I am embarrassed (once again) to call myself an American.
Well, I can’t speak for everybody but it certainly gave ME confidence and hope to see Dick Cheney visiting the devastated areas. Just shows the lengths to which the administration will go to bring us help and a bright vision of the great future of our nation.
For LAO,
Did Cheney get his hands dirty? I would be surprised if he did. It is all smoke and mirrors PR. Sorry, but it is true! They only care for themselves and where the next dollar in their own pocket comes from usually at the expemse of the poor.
Bush is skull & bones,and a 33degree freemason,all he cares about is the elite.Bush & dick probably sat back and had a laugh over new orleans.After all this is the same bush who said the enron scandel is bloody brilliant.Bush is really just running the american colony for his cousin elizabeth anyway.Queen Elizabeth is the patroness of world freemasonry,and her cousin the duke of kent is grandmaster of world freemasonry.They are reptile (blueblood)bloodlines and they don’t care about the working class or middle class.Bush’s real agenda is to carry out his new world order,he could care less about americans dying from natural desasters,heart disiease,or aids.Bush and is associates are evil,that is why it took so long to get help in new orleans.Bush also uses the gay issue to divide the country,for all we know,bush may be getting serviced by rent boys at the white house(or sex slaves).Love is the only way we can defeat these corrupt autocrats.We must not give in to fear.Make love not war.My heart goes out to all who have suffered during these fascist years under the bush regime.I’ll tell you what would really help the victims of that huricane,they would be helped if all the greedy millionaires and billionaires would build these people some new places to live free of charge,and help these displaced people get back on there feet again. What does the super rich need with there tenth rolls royce or a 20 millon lear jet when so many people are homeless,jobless,and living in utter fear and despair.For the rich not to help these people,shows there true colors,coldblooded and evil.America I don’t know you anymore(not that I ever really did).