I like Spike!

I watched When the Levees Broke. A requiem in 4 acts. last night on HBO. Well I watched Parts 1 and 2 last night. The second half is on tonight. Just a few comments (I won't call them "criticisms" because like a toddler throwing a tantrum I feel that ANY attention paid by the rest of the world to this hellish on-going situation is good attention): Nevermind the footage showing that Bush knew a few days before the storm. We all knew years before the storm! EVERYONE knew! The City of New Orleans KNEW. The White House KNEW. FEMA KNEW. The first I personally heard of what would happen to this city if it endured a direct hit was in 2000 when a FEMA representative briefed the producers at the local website where I worked at the start of that hurricane season. Remember when the Superdome was opened up as a shelter of last resort? During Marc Morial's term as mayor? I think it was for Hurricane Georges. And the evacuees were locked inside? Did anyone have adequate water, food, cots, medicine and basic human needs then? No. They did not. Not for a week in the Superdome. Fortunately, the stay in the Superdome at that time was only about 48 hours. We dodged the bullet on that one, but it really should have been a lesson to this city.

Also, the Mayor of this city should have been on the ground talking to the survivors. Not holed up in some hotel room or showering on Air Force One. And don't even get me started on Bush and his cronies. Don't tell me that we are going to prosecute medical personnel who were saving lives under unimaginable conditions and that the Army Corps of Engineers and the Levee Board will not be held accountable for the loss of more than 1,000 lives.

One part of last night's showing made me feel really squirmy. The guy standing in front of the Riverboat House in Holy Cross talking about how many guns he has. I think that was meant to convey to people who don't live here that all the white people in this city have guns to protect themselves from the black people. And that just isn't true. Many of the people in this city (of all races) have guns to protect themselves from CRIMINALS. And let's face it, New Orleans wasn't Mayberry before the storm.

I know. I know. I used to be one of the folks sitting in my living room in Los Angeles thinking that guns are just BAD. And that is as far as my thought process went. Until I moved back here and realized that the bad guys all have guns. My little pepper spray wasn't going to do much good in an altercation with some whacked out crack addict stopping off at that all night teller machine (me) for some cash to buy a rock.

I’m probably suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. My right eye has been twitching for weeks now. I am crying several times a day. And I admit I could not have done a better job than Mayor Nagin. But I didn't sign up to be mayor. I didn't sign up for that responsibility. He did. As the Superchicken theme says, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it." Come to think of it, the whole city would have been better off if Superchicken had been elected mayor instead.

As a documentary film maker Spike Lee did his job. It is painful to watch. Draw your own conclusions. The only mystery to me is how C. Ray Nagin got re-elected. Never mind. George Bush got re-elected too.