“9th ward diagonal car 1″
Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.
– Bob Dylan, “Everything is Broken”
Last year, I posted the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken,” and linked various phrases to images from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The degree to which Dylan’s words fit the events unfolding before us was uncanny.
A year later, New Orleans remains a city crippled not only by a natural disaster, but by a man-made one: a Republican administration that sat on its ass and ate birthday cake while a city drowned has compounded that frightening lack of human decency by breaking promise after promise to those in the region.
Of course, only a fool would think that that has been an accident. Bush put Karl Rove in charge of the administration’s post-Katrina strategy, an act of bad faith of such magnitude that one recoils from the sheer monstrosity of it. As Dan Froomkin noted at the time:
That is Rove’s hallmark.
And that is exactly what has come to pass: a bungled recovery process that has allowed the wreckage of the storm to fester under the hot Louisiana sun. And it’s all being done with political objectives in mind, as Frank Rich noted in the The New York Times this past Sunday:
All across the media landscape, the Bush administration is being shown for what it is: a callous political machine that cares only for its own survival.
That is going to be brought home over the next two days, as President Bush attempts to whitewash his response to the storm with a series of PR stunts. After all, you don’t introduce new products in August: you just shine up the old lies and put them out on the shelf in some new packaging.
As noted here a few days ago, Matt Cohen, who blogs at 1115.org, decided to take a first-hand look behind the Bush administration’s spin. Traveling down to New Orleans with his camera, Matt has posted a powerful set of pictures on flickr that document the all-too-slow recovery of New Orleans (I thank him for granting me permission to use a few of his images here), and he has just written a searing account of his trip through the 9th Ward.
It’s called A Victory Lap for Broken Promises:
It’s an amazing post that showcases the best of what blogs can do. Please go and read it.
Of all of the images that Matt has posted, the one below struck me most deeply:
9th ward this was home, Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006“HOME This was HOME,” the spray-painted eulogy reads. The house still stands, but the home inside it is gone, for now. It will be vanquished permanently, if the Bush administration has its way.
And that is something that we will never forget.
Update: Please visit Shakespeare’s Sister for many more perspectives on the first anniversary of Hurrican Katrina. In her post, Shakes argues convincingly that “Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success.”
16 Comments on "Still Broken"
The Heretik:
Lost…
“This is a real black mark on his administration, and it’s going to stay with him for a long time. It will be in every textbook.”
Some will have more harsh things to say about Bush that won’t appear in any textbooks. Mission accomplished…
Mark:
Bush got into office promising that things would be run differently than they had been during the Clinton years, and he certainly did that with FEMA.
By all accounts, Clinton fixed FEMA’s administration problems (mostly made by Bush I), kicking out clueless cronies and making it a real resource. Bush II came in and re-hired the cronies.
This isn’t something that was aready broken when Bush came along. FEMA was working just fine when he came into office, and he broke it. I can’t see how blame could be placed on anyone BUT him.
I’m sure he loses a lot of sleep over it.
Kevin Wolf:
In terms of sheer numbers, of course, Iraq is worse and the repercussions may be unstoppable.
But this domestic mess is a disgrace. We must do everything we can not just to help Gulf Coast residents but to hold Bush accountable.
Disgusting and heartbreaking.
Spencer:
Thanks so much for this. This week I will be writing/calling my representatives to ask them about post-Katrina New Orleans and where are the changes we were promised?
I feel as if I have let these people down by not doing my small part.
Catherine:
As much as I hate GWB, this is not all his fault. You should read my post from today. This whole thing makes me physically sick.
Bill:
Matt, this is right-on.
When you see what’s happened (or rather, what hasn’t happened) in N.O. over the course of the year— and realize that it’s been left to Rove to head the effort— the political test underlying the aid calculus is hard to dispute.
…and these are people’s homes, jobs and lives, left twisting. It’s criminal.
I’m linking to your post and hope lots of other folks do too.
Neddie Jingo:
The destination: a smaller city, with a large portion of its former black population permanently dispersed. “Out of the Katrina debacle, Bush is making political gains,” Mr. Brinkley says incredulously. “The last blue state in the Old South is turning into a red state.”
By their works ye shall know them, I guess.
I’ve been wrestling with the question, Can they really be that cynical? Or that devious?
But I realize, on reflection, that the question, though compelling, is irrelevant. Whether or not Froomkin was right and Karl Rove was able to manipulate circumstances over which he had no obvious control — massive, unaccountable contracting fraud, an Army Corps of Engineers of spectacular incompetence, feckless local pols — the end result could not have been more favorable to those who stand to benefit from the destruction of New Orleans: real estate developers, crooked contractors, and speculators who have no interest in the return of the New Orleans Diaspora.
Nausea. How much more nausea can I handle? Guess I’ll get to find out.
Neddie Jingo:
PS: Eugene Robinson at the WashPost seems to have been visiting Matt Cohen’s Flickr collection — or perhaps your blog. He takes his title from that “Home this was Home” photo. It’s powerful, all right. Check ‘er out.
zencomix:
The use of Black and White photography makes it that much more haunting for me.
Matt:
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I apologize for getting back to you so late — today was my first day of teaching; I’m bleary and overwhelmed with work.
Catherine: no, it’s not all Dubya’s fault, but it is his failure.
Neddie: “I’ve been wrestling with the question, Can they really be that cynical? Or that devious?”
I have little doubt that they are that cynical, but I don’t think they are that devious. But you’re right — in the end, the answer hardly matters, for the results are the same whether intentional or not. I think, for the most part, that the recovery has been guided by basic Bush Republican principles: screw the poor, fatten the rich, and run the whole shebang through a vast network of cronies.
The end result of that is what we see in these photos.
Four days after the storm, as people were drowning, Republicans thought that the most urgent problem facing the country was cutting the estate tax (more info here). That’s why I agree with Shakespeare’s Sister, above, that this has as much to do with the larger project of the conservative movement as it does with the Bush White House.
Rod:
So have we heard the new Dylan album yet, he asks, returning helplessly to the shallow waters where he feels more comfortable? I’m waiting for someone I trust to give me the impetus to go buy it.
Matt:
Music, for you, Rod, is hardly the realm of shallow waters.
I haven’t heard the whole album yet, but I have seen the first video, which stars Scarlett Johansson and is directed by Bennett Miller — who also directed “Capote.”
I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about the song. Mildly positive, I think.
Fred:
Great post, to bad it had to be written. Would that we lived in a bizarro world where Bush got it right…once.
Rod:
I’m feeling some kind of fogeyish urge to go out and buy Modern Times, Surprise, and We Shall Overcome and do some kind of Giants of Music In Their Dotage Event Album Comparison thing.
A propos of absolutely nothing at all.
Matt:
Get the Dylan. Listening to it the second time through, I’m falling for it, hard.
The Pfork review is pretty much dead-on, I think. It’s a mellow album that comes right out of the touring he has been doing.
I’ll do a post on it soon. For now, I’ll say two things:
1. I think my reservations about “When the Deal Goes Down” had a lot to do with my feelings about the video. I like the song much, much better without the Scarlett Johansson faux-nostalgia.
In fact, listening to the song again, I think my enthusiasm for it is almost unbounded.
2. Favorite songs so far: “When the Deal Goes Down,” “Nettie Moore,” and “Ain’t Talkin’.”
C.Trautmann:
The black and white and the brutal contrast is fascinating me. Besides, the lyric is awesome.
thanks
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