Broussard Defends His Position

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Aaron Broussard was invited to Meet the Press again this Sunday morning. What follows is a transcript of his interview. Let me just say -- this is one of the most powerful, honest voicing of opinion I have ever witnessed.

Some excerpts first:

"Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man's tragic loss of a mother because she was abandoned in a nursing home? Are you kidding? What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake. Are you kidding me? That wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried last week. That was a man's mother whose story, if it is entirely broadcast, will be the epitome of abandonment."

and....

"What kind of agenda is going on here? Mother Nature doesn't have a political party. Mother Nature can vote a person dead and Mother Nature can vote a community out of existence. But Mother Nature is not playing any political games here. Somebody better wake up. You want to come and live in this community and see the tragedy we're living in? Are you sitting there having your coffee, you're in a place where toilets flush and lights go on and everything's a dream and you pick up your paper and you want to battle ideology and political chess games? Man, get out of my face. Whoever wants to do that, get out of my face."

and this..

"Were we abandoned by the federal government? Absolutely we were. Were there more people that abandoned us? Make the list. The list can go on for miles. That's for history to document. That's what Congress does best, burn witches. Let Congress do their hearings. Let them find the witches. Let them burn them. The media burns witches better than anybody. Let the media go find the witches and burn them. But as I stood on the ground, sir, for day after day after day after day, nobody came here, sir. Nobody came. The federal government didn't come. The Red Cross didn't come. I'll give you a list of people that didn't come here, sir, and I was here."


You can read the entire transcript here .

I've never seen Tim Russert so truly stunned at a response before.

 

I couldn't get the link to load (prob. at my end), but geez... that's one hell of a wake-up call for people. And to Broussard's credit, he's not engaging in politics or spin; he's getting on with the point that the response was woeful, that it's a human tragedy with real victims, and that industries of people could sit around all day and assign blame, but none of it would actually address the problem.

Broussard sounds like an eminently practical man, here. The sort of guy that politicians and spin-doctors can't stand because he isn't buying into the game and is demanding answers instead. It's easy to ignore the physical and personal impact from somewhere else because the only way it has affected you is higher oil prices and maybe a tax levy to help rebuild New Orleans. NO went to crap arguably within hours of Katrina, yet its consequences were far worse than they could or should have been because of human inaction.

To paraphrase Terry Pratchett - Nature causes disasters, but you need humans to create a catastrophe.

At the risk of being off-topic and crass - I wonder if this will encourage a greater sensitivity to stories of human suffering from around the world, but that were caused by human action or result from foreign policy.

 

This administration's strong suit has always been "spin": making it sound good, deflecting criticism by pointing the finger the other way. It didn't work this time because there are too many dead bodies on the other side of the scales, and because the bodies happen to be in this country. Put into a position where sound bites and photo ops cannot be substituted for competence and results under a glaring spotlight, they are visibly wilting. Bush looks like a man who badly needs a vacation, although he just had one.

Broussard's uncomfortable truths merely underline this fact.

 

So the **** hits the fan, and all the politicians want to do is point at the other side and say "he did it". That might be entertaining, but that does absolutely nothing for the people of New Orleans.

The people of New Orleans want solutions, not finger pointing. Many people got caught with their pants down. No amount of head hunting will change that. Lets wait until the immediate trouble is resolved before we stare the witch hunts...

 

Absolutely, Gnarff. The situation is worse for the breaches of the levees caused by Hurricane Rita. I loathe the man and his administration, but it's not Bush's fault that a hurricane hit New Orleans. Their culpability in the extent of the disaster can be determined later; the initial response was what was needed, and what was missing. People that should still be alive are dead because of it.

Longer-term questions will need to be asked in the wake of the destruction and flooding in New Orleans. In the meantime, fixing the problems first when they can be, repairing the damage, burying the dead, then looking to why it was so calamitous should be the priorities - not looking for someone to pin the blame on.

 

And once the time comes for that, the focus ought to be on solutions, not who's pants were farthest down. Focus on preventing such damage next time.