"But 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." - Anne Rice
Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? - New York Times
No, Anne, it's obvious that it's you who do not know what it means to lose New Orleans, as I can find no evidence of your worry until this date. But let's have a look at some tough-love facts.
There are lots of people like Anne Rice, people who live below sea level and are okay with a state and local government that spends every last dollar it can get it's hands on to keep the tourism industry happy because that's the only industry that would build anything more complex than a newspaper stand in such a town. A government that had one chance after another to work out a reasonable evacuation plan but waited until the water inundated the hundreds of buses the city had before crying out that there was no way to move the people it still hadn't ordered to leave. A government that waited 10 days to issue a mandatory evacuation because it feared that the hotel owners would balk at emptying the cash cows.
But all of them, the Blanco's, the Nagin's, the corrupt police, the looters...who showed up everywhere there was a camera yet Ms Rice would have us believe were just a "tiny minority", the Ms Rice's themselves who did nothing but enjoy the benefits of living in what once was a beautiful place to live, then complain about others when this beautiful place turned mad dog and began devouring it's own ... they ALL are citizens. They're our neighbors our countrymen and our friends, but the time has come for them to face reality and to understand that we're not going to simply rebuild their little paradise without help from THEM. New Orleans did nothing to help itself before or during the hurricane and shouldn't expect it's friends to continue to do everything AFTER the hurricane. Before this thing even hit I said that tourists would have to bear some of the brunt of rebuilding New Orleans should a worse case scenario come to pass, and that suggestion is far more valid today than a week and a half ago. The surcharge or surtax that SHOULD have been placed on every room, every rent-a-car, every string of beads that the tourists buy to induce young girls to bare their breasts, is long overdue. If you want to live in New Orleans, if you want to visit New Orleans then there's got to be a way to FIX New Orleans, and if you can't agree with something as simple as that then sorry Anne, and the ones who adore you, there should no longer BE a New Orleans.
The free lunch is over. The State government, the local government...yes, this includes the police if and when they return, the tourist industry and the people have to make a difficult decision. Some of the milk from this cash cow MUST go towards making it a safer place to live and visit. No place on earth is totally free from the ravages of nature, but this is ridiculous. Now, it's the typical liberal mindset, the Anne Rice mindset, to tiptoe through the tulips while letting reality take care of itself, but those days are over. Yes, we'll help you, the hundreds of millions of dollars of donations and the actions of your neighboring states proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But we will not help you if you do not want to help yourself. Sorry, Anne, but YOU need to pitch in too. It wasn't us who turned our backs, it was you and your governor and your mayor and your police and your citizens who gave nothing back to a town that by any reasonable stretch of the imagination should ever have existed at all. Now might be a good time to pitch in without resorting to the usual liberal kneejerk of weeping when there's work to be done.
And the saddest part about the town and you, Anne? You didn't even really have to ask, we were helping anyway. Lots more than you ever did.
See. Didn't mention, even once how horrid a writer Anne Rice is, or how awful the movies adapted from her "work" are, or how she's such the liberal darling that so weepy an essay was to be expected. Nope. Didn't even whisper that the New York Times is one of the few newspapers in America that would print such drivel nor did I make reference to the fact that the upcoming review on her new book will be a rave must-read, and that they are counting on her pubishers to spend big bucks advertising it.
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