I don’t do anniversaries. I do my wedding anniversary to keep peace in the family. I don’t remember the exact date of my plane crash. I don’t celebrate the day I quit drinking over 21 years ago. I believe you have to move on.
I began the end of the mass media in the United States began with Katrina. The media stopped being reporters and became more like an afternoon soap opera. They started reporting emotions and stopped reporting news. The fifth year anniversary of Katrina took top billing on the three prime time network news shows. It was all emotional drivel, except for the visit from Obama. He was there because his advisers told him to go. He was making the usual promises of more money from Washington and more jobs.
The problems with Katrina came from an inept government. Bad work from the Army Corps of Engineers, a corrupt incompetent mayor who did nothing but blame Bush, an even more inept governor who did nothing but ask everyone in the country to do everything. Now comes an equally inept President who shows up to blame everyone for Katrina and promise everything and will deliver nothing.
A governor named Jindal has rebuilt the city and the state. He delivers on his promises. He berated the promising President during the Gulf oil spill for not delivering what he needed. He gets no credit from the media for anything, but he will get credit at the polls. Something the promising President will never get again.
There are hundreds of Katrina trailers sitting idle. There are billions of unspent Katrina aid dollars waiting to be awarded. Would it seem the journalists of America would be giving us this story on the 5th anniversary of Katrina instead of showing us Madge who lost her home and just moved into a new one built by volunteers. I’m happy for Madge, but it seems like a high school journalism project, while finding out what is still not working from the government who has it’s leader making more promises when he can’t deliver on the ones already made and paid for with your tax dollars.
Katrina was a sad natural disaster. Too many lost lives and lost homes. Iowa had a similar disaster a few years later. They moved on. New Orleans never will until we tell the media and the politicians we’ve had enough of Katrina. I’m saying it, I’m done with Katrina.
