Over in Orlando, folks are apparently tired of hearing about Katrina–specifically, tired of hearing about New Orleans and Katrina. They wonder why we’re getting all this attention when other cities and towns along the coast received far more damage than New Orleans did. They wonder why we weren’t better prepared, why folks didn’t leave, and why, oh, why there are so many goddamn telethons.
Well, lemme bring you up to speed, sister.
1. If you think you’re sick of hearing about Katrina, try living in New Orleans for a couple of weeks. Actually, make that days. I mean, we have to drive through it on the way to work, on the way to school, on the way to the grocery store. And on top of all the weedy yards and houses still marked with spray paint, we have to hear about it on the evening news, too? We have to read about it in the paper? We have to see it online on every media outlet and on the front of every CD package emblazoned with the words “Proceeds to benefit the recovery effort in New Orleans”? Enough already.
2. We understand that we’re not the only city affected by the storm. We know there are places that suffered much worse than New Orleans–places where there’s nothing left to salvage because even the slabs of houses were washed out to sea. We’re painfully aware of all that, and I think that each of us, to some degree, is experiencing a bit of survivor’s guilt. However, as much as I like to think I control everything in the universe, I have no power over the media. Nor do my friends and neighbors. Evacuees sitting around in Red Cross shelters don’t make front page news, and felled trees don’t generate much human interest. New Orleans won out because we had the best story: people in despair amid neighborhoods full of muck.
3. We were also an important story because we were a great example of the government’s inability to respond to disasters at the local, state, and national level. The human suffering that you and I and everyone else with electricity witnessed that week was not matched by an outpouring of concern from the government, and that disconnect made great news. This shouldn’t be surprising: it’s journalism 101.
4. Not to be snotty or anything, but New Orleans has generated a great deal of sympathy among Americans because we’ve given so much to the country over the past three centuries, from music to food to literature and more. No disrespect to Orlando, but, um, I don’t think losing Sea World would be as big of a story.
5. And just so you and everyone else in Orlando knows: New Orleans is not “GONE”. The parts of the city that most folks know and love–the Quarter, Uptown, and so on–are alive and well. I don’t know if you noticed, but that thing we call the Superdome reopened a few weeks ago. I think it was on TV. Don’t write us off.
I’m not even going to bother to mention some of the other crap discussed in those posts. How many times do we have to explain to others why residents didn’t leave–residents who didn’t own cars or even know friends with cars? How many times to we have to explain that the New Orleans/Katrina story was not so much about a natural disaster as it was about government ineptitude, from the Corps of Engineers’ faulty levees to Brownie’s botched rescue/recovery efforts? When you folks come up with something new to say, some new criticism that you wanna level at New Orleans or the media or whatever, by all means let us know, but until then, please, give us a break.
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