What else is on?

NATION IGNORES
GULF VICTIMS 

By M.T. Hearst
National Editor

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana – Thousands of pathetic poor brown creatures have washed up on the shores and streets of this fabled city as a nation carries on as normal, apparently oblivious to their suffering.

Under the all-unseeing gaze of an absence of television cameras and media attention, thousands of victims of the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico wait in agony for help that never comes. 

These creatures, rendered homeless and destitute by Hurricane Katrina, still confront the destruction of their natural habitat and the ecosystem that allowed them to live, however modestly.

 
Help is not pouring in to clean up the mess left by catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, including the destruction of New Orleans's only public hospital

Five years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the homes, schools, stores, and workplaces of the largely black residents of New Orleans and other smaller com- munities along the Gulf of Mexico, the former residents struggle in vain to free themselves of the sticky residue of the poorly-designed Bush Administration programs that failed to clean up the mess that it made.

There is a palpable lack of national outrage over the continued plight of these unfortunate souls that grows ever less vocal as the years pass. As a result, Brian Williams and Katie Couric have not rushed to the Gulf Coast to report live on their continued sufferings, including the protracted failure to restore the habitat of the Ninth Ward, which remains a wasteland. Their nightly news shows do not begin each night with a graphic stating the number of days that have passed since the disaster struck.

Therefore, the Obama Administration feels no pressure to show that the President is angry about the continued failure to rebuild their neighborhoods. The White House confirms that the President is not receiving daily briefings about the endless suffering of the displaced residents of New Orleans and has not convened an interagency task force to coordinate relief and remediation.

Nor is Louisiana Governor and chief page Bobby Jindal daily holding press conferences in front of the ruined Charity Hospital, which has not yet been rebuilt in the five years since it was destroyed, or other videogenic backdrops.  On live TV, he has not demanded far-fetched and unworkable solutions in an effort to score cheap political points.

Washington pundits have not criticized President Obama for showing insufficient ire nor wasted countless cable-news segments on the likely political repercussions of the continuing failure to restore New Orleans. They have not expressed any views as to whether voters, who seems similarly uninterested, will punish Democrats at the polls in November for the alleged failings of the Obama Administration.

 
The clamor to restore the natural habitat of the inhabitants of the Ninth Ward is not growing as each day passes without a solution

Across the country, thousands of volunteers are not flooding the Gulf Coast to provide hot baths and other ameliorative services to the pitiable residents of the Ninth Ward, weighted down by a thick gooey sense of hopelessness.

Not inspired by footage of the absent volunteers, Americans of all walks of life have not opened up their pocketbooks to assist in the relief effort. Similarly, Hollywood celebrities have not rushed to the Gulf Coast with crackpot "solutions" to the housing and jobs crisis plaguing the devastated communities. In fact, not a single celebrity has publicly offered to adopt a Katrina orphan.

In response to the continuing crisis, thousands of underemployed young men living in their parents' basements and wearing baseball caps backwards have not posted on YouTube thousands of rants against those believed responsible for the disaster, which have not been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. The existence of these videos has not been Tweeted (or, for that matter, reTweeted) or made known by postings on countless Facebook walls.

The helpless residents of the devastated areas are left to stagnate in their flimsy trailers, untouched by the ebb of aid not rushing to them. "All I do is sit all day and look at the birds," said Mrs. Anne Broyard. "Dirty, filthy, disgusting birds. It used to a be a person could sit on their front porch and visit with their neighbors. Not anymore. Now all you see is birds. Birds – catch my drift?"

Having assured Mrs. Broyard that I caught her drift, I decided there was no story here and summoned the Publisher's [You mean your husband's? – Ed.] NetJet.