The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated

OK, so it wasn’t ideal. By edict of NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue the New Orleans Saints played their first home game of the season at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey—admittedly, this was hardly their “home”. Everyone called it a Saints home game, but it clearly wasn’t. The Saints dressed in the visitors’ locker room and while there were some Saints fans in attendance, it’s nothing like having scores of thousands of your own fans. But nothing about that situation was ideal—the destruction and death and displacement wrought by Katrina brought difficulties that the NFL, least, of all organizations, could possibly have imagined.

The league tried to deal with the problem as effectively as possible—they flew Saints fans from Louisiana to the New Jersey, the Saints dressed in their home uniforms, the Giants in their away shirts, the Saints logo was painted onto one of the endzones, were among the measures taken in order to mimic a home game in an away venue. Give the league some credit—they did not orchestrate this scenario in order to deliberately disadvantage the Saints and they were doing the best they could in a difficult situation. The league also managed to treat the whole process with a certain amount of sensitivity, donating ticket proceeds to the hurricane relief effort and coupling the special Monday night double-header with a telethon to raise money for the cause.

Yet the Saints have not been satisfied and have aired their grievances in the media. Head Coach Jim Haslett was unhappy about the “Let’s Go Giants” signs hung by the Jersey fans and the crowd noise while receiver Joe Horn felt the league made a mockery of the Saints organization with its supposedly unilateral decision to move that game to a “hostile city”.

In defense of New York area sports fans, in spite of what the prevailing notion regarding our behavior may be, we are not so obnoxious that we would intentionally contribute towards a hostile environment for a team that has already suffered so much. For the Saints to suggest such a thing is an affront on our humanitarian sensibilities. New Yorkers have also suffered at the hands of a horrifying disaster, ours unnatural and unforeseen, but a disaster in which we relied upon the strength of the nation to support us through emotionally difficult times. If any city on the NFL map has fans and a team who would understand what the New Orleans team and its fans had to deal with, it is most definitely New York City. And in defense of the league itself, the circumstances they were facing were beyond difficult and they dealt with it in as compassionate a manner as possible.

Horn and Haslett imply that the NFL attempted to make a difficult situation impossible for the Saints, when clearly the league was scrambling to do what it could. The league certainly doesn’t have a preference for New York—after 9/11, the NFL pointedly did not award the Superbowl venue to the Meadowlands as a symbol of sympathy or empathy. The crowd may have been loud, but the Giants had to contend with the noise as well. They were also mindful of the situation and responded by showing their opponents additional sensitivity. NFL games are often marked by displays of bravado which serve to amp up the fans and provide the players themselves with a psychological boost. All of that had to be toned down for this game, lest the Giants appear inconsiderate to their “hosts”.

Above all, the fact of the matter is the Saints did not play well. They committed six turnovers, thirteen penalties, three fumbles—all of which resulted in a loss of possession, and allowed four sacks on their quarterback. Any way you slice it, New Orleans’ downfall was sloppy play. Their coach and players have attempted to use the tragedy that is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as justification for their loss and to blame their problems on the league. Frankly, such a reaction is sophomoric. Great athletes will often humbly brush aside any suggestion that some injury or other distraction contributed to their loss. The Saints need to stop using Katrina as an excuse and own up to their own abilities and shortcomings. The people of New Orleans could use a distraction themselves after what they’ve been through, and the athletes who undoubtedly did not spend any days on a highway praying for clean water and fearing for their lives, have an obligation to stop whining about their insecurities and do their best to rebuild the morale of their city.

Posted by Sam Clemens at 08:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On "The Situation Room" on CNN this afternoon, Wolf Blitzer, in the process of interviewing Robert Bennett, Judith Miller’s lawyer, asked as his final question: could Bob please comment on the widely reported remarks made by his brother, William Bennett (former Education Secretary under President Reagan)? Robert Bennett immediately bristled at the question and took issue with Blitzer’s ambush, claiming that up until now, he had held him in high regard and was appalled that he would pull something so egregiously underhanded as to ask him a question without allowing him sufficient preparation. He went on to say that he had not discussed the issue with his brother at all. He must be the only one in the country who wasn’t trying to reach Bill Bennett for further elucidation of his radio comments. Robert Bennett’s irritable reaction highlights the offensive nature of the statement made by his brother – so indefensible that the only way to respond and save face is to use the elementary trick of turning the tables on the questioner and highlighting his flaws.

Robert Bennett is a minor player in this game though. And perhaps, so is Bill Bennett. How he could have made such a statement, is in itself, incomprehensible—even though he threw in the caveat that the idea (that he posited himself) was morally reprehensible. The comments in question were a response to various conjectures in the book Freakonomics, which hypothesizes the result of the abortion on the economy – have we lost revenue from those who would have been additions to the workforce, or have we lost potential criminals rather than potential upstanding citizens? The authors’ conclusions veer towards the latter consequence, theorizing that abortions are more likely in poor families and therefore those kids were more likely to be future ex-cons. Bill Bennett then took the issue and ran with it, throwing race relations into an already volatile abortion discussion and creating a veritable bonfire from several hot button issues that divide America today.

The real issue at hand here however, is not just Bennett’s incendiary remarks. It is the penchant for members of the GOP to rush headlong into sweeping generalizations without any substantial facts to back their opinions. This is not the first time one of them has touched on a topic (or, in this case, several) that has caused a national uproar, that any sentient person would think twice about uttering out loud in the privacy of their own homes. But lately, we have become accustomed to it: Barbara Bush claims the evacuees of Hurricane Katrina are better off in the Astrodome that dealing with their usual hand-to-mouth existence; Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff are unable to comprehend why anyone would choose not to jump in their car and drive to a hotel in another state when they heard a category 4 hurricane was headed their way; Condi Rice sees nothing wrong with purchasing Ferragamos and attending musicals while millions are left stranded on a highway hoping for clean water.

Of course this is only within the past month. Were we to go back through history, we would likely find that more Republicans are less sensitive to issues of race and poverty than their Democratic counterparts. Invariably, defenders of those who are throwing these comments around with wild abandon, will say that the comments were “taken out of context” or perhaps “were misconstrued”. Ultimately a true apology does not follow and even if a mea culpa is issued, it is usually qualified and somehow seems hollow. The problem lies not with the statements themselves, but with the haphazard manner in which they are made. They belie a truth that no one will admit, but every now and again, comes to the fore: that they are ultimately insensitive to the issues that face minorities and the poverty-stricken. And if they cannot display some sensitivity, if they cannot understand why their remarks cause such a din in the media and with the populous, then how can they represent the nation in government and how can they truly govern effectively?

Posted by Sam Clemens at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Crisis in the Gulf!” scream our newscasts and newspapers. We see a flurry of images: devastated landscapes, innocents suffering at the hands of a force more powerful than either their frail bodies or flimsy homes could withstand, children crying. We hear the statements: “oil prices skyrocket as the market reacts”, “fuel shortage”, “rebuilding effort”, “no timescale”. We see President Bush congratulating his top brass for their efforts, all the while the masses and the media wonder just what those efforts were and why they are being congratulated. We hear about the formation of an investigatory commission to discover what went wrong and who was to blame; the administration refuses to cooperate, then demands that it be allowed to perform any such investigation itself.

By now, the storylines that frame the weather-related disasters hitting the states that lie along the Gulf of Mexico have started to blur with the storylines that frame the disaster that is the current war in the Persian Gulf. The main criticisms and problems of the two situations are similar, with a couple of key variations.

In the case of the Gulf War, Mr. Bush and his cohorts had developed their plan of attack almost meticulously. As Richard Clarke former counterterrorism czar under Presidents G.W. Bush and Clinton before him reports in Against All Enemies, following the events of September 11, 2001, Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Defense Secretary) in meetings in the White House Situation Room, refused to acknowledge that a terrorist network, specifically Al Qaeda, could be responsible for such an attack. Instead, to Clarke’s surprise, Wolfowitz proceeded to put forward the largely dismissed theory that state-sponsored terrorism was behind such attacks and that some state, namely Iraq, was where the US should direct its efforts.

The devastation unleashed on the coastal states as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was unlike 9/11, completely anticipated. (Discount for a moment, if you will, the infamous memo delivered to President Bush at his Crawford ranch in August 2001 warning of a possible hijacking of planes by Al Qaeda and the planes being used to attack major landmarks.) However, the administration had no made preparatory efforts in order to deal with the destruction that was likely to follow. Even after the suffering of the people was broadcast into homes across the country, leading administration officials failed to interrupt their vacations to handle the issue and claimed not to be aware of just how bad the situation was.

The story arcs of Katrina and Iraq converge from there. Although the preparation for the aftermath and the anticipation of the event itself were different in these cases, the result was the same – interminable waiting by the innocent victims for some sort of resolution, an administration clearly stumbling in an effort to find an easy solution, a fuel crisis, and no end in sight.

As if it weren’t bad enough that the actions taken by the administration in response to difficult situations both foreign and domestic were similarly impotent, they are unwilling to engage in any activities that may provide a little hope to those who are suffering as a result – the hurricane victims, soldiers who lack armor, etc. The dual crises boil down to issues that have become seriously problematic thanks to a lack of planning on the part of the current administration and an unwillingness to make any sacrifice that may resolve the issue. One of the announcements President Bush made following Katrina’s devastation was the promise not to rescind the tax cuts for the ultra-rich. While tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are unwise when the nation is facing a budget crisis, they are almost inconceivably irresponsible while the nation is simultaneously engaged in war and attempting to rebuild a coastline and revive entire cities. The Bush administration is falling back on the same illogical decisions that got the nation in a near crisis situation in the first place with the war in Iraq. It has now has doubled up on those mistakes by practically duplicating them in response to a natural national disaster. One can only hope that no further calamities befall the country while this administration reigns – the effects could be potentially crippling to an already limping nation.

Posted by Sam Clemens at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hurricane Rita is rolling through the Gulf coast region right now, on a collision course for eastern Texas. The Bush administration, determined not to make the same mistakes it made when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, is trying to mobilize an evacuation effort in order to prevent Galveston and Corpus Christi from becoming the next Katrina. He doesn’t get it. We’re witnessing the result of someone who is fighting for his political reputation by simply reacting to his last big public relations failure. He thinks he can recover from the Katrina fiasco by doing now what he didn’t do then – pay attention to the residents living in the next storm’s path.

Mr. Bush has been, and will always be, a reactive president. The problem with that is that presidents, while they should be able to respond decisively and rapidly to any of a variety of large-scale problems, also need to be proactive, foreseeing potential problems before they arise and working to prevent them. Mr. Bush has long refused to acknowledge the existence of global warming – perhaps a more accurate term is ‘climate change’ – and now the problem is threatening to undo his reputation as a leader and by extension, his presidency.

What is at stake here is not simply the head FEMA job and whether or not that organization remains under the Department of Homeland Security. Those are minor plot points in the larger storyline. The real problem here is this: as hurricanes continue to increase in ferocity, thanks in part to our environmental neglect, what will Mr. Bush do to reverse this deadly trend? Reams of evidence have been gathered by leading scientists on the subject, with institutions such as M.I.T. weighing in on the matter. It’s pretty much unanimous that the intensity of the hurricanes affecting the Gulf region is directly due to the temperature of the water in the Caribbean – a seemingly insignificant increase of 1 degree Fahrenheit can have potentially devastating effects. Additionally, warmer ocean waters can affect the tracks of the storms, directing them towards the eastern coastal states.

The problems caused by global warming are not limited to hurricanes – droughts, coastal flooding, melting glaciers, more intense snowstorms – all are direct results of the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases we release into the environment. It is clear that drastic action must be taken immediately, yet Mr. Bush continues to pursue an environmentally unfriendly agenda. The Kyoto Treaty remains unsigned; if Mr. Bush truly felt that the accord does not go far enough in reduce greenhouse emissions, shouldn’t he propose a feasible alternative, rather than simply reject it out of hand? Additionally, Mr. Bush has not actively encouraged environmental protection during his presidency. Famously, one of his first acts as president was to rescind President Clinton’s rules protecting much of America’s wilderness. Mr. Bush, although investing some government money in developing hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars, has not fully embraced the idea of alternative fuel sources. Rather, he has touted drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as an answer to our foreign oil dependence. That neither solves our fossil fuel fascination which leads to excessive toxic emissions and given the relatively low estimates of exactly how much oil is actually located in ANWR, it is unlikely America’s SUV-happy drivers will be satisfied with that “solution” for very long.

The nation is suffering as a result of these ill-conceived notions. Global warming is contributing to more destructive hurricanes which are ravaging the Southern portion of the US, and the average person is finding it difficult to fill up their car’s gas tanks in order to get to work. If Mr. Bush doesn’t take action soon, global warming may also leave a lasting destructive mark on his presidency.

Posted by Sam Clemens at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The US Open entered its second week on Labor Day and in the midst of the American onslaught in the draw, a 25-year old tennis player named James Blake continued his incredible run. Blake’s story is a compelling one due to its classic “guy overcomes tragedy to succeed” storyline. By now you’ve doubtless heard the salient points of this gripping story – Blake was afflicted with scoliosis as a child which required him to spend the majority of the day strapped into a back brace; about a year and a half ago he ran into a net post and fractured his skull; as he recovered from that injury, his ailing dad lost his battle with cancer; the stress of that ordeal left the younger Blake susceptible to viral shingles which paralyzed the left side of his face and affected his vision in one eye. And this brave young man has volleyed away each of these problems to rebound to arguably the best condition of his career.

We all delight in the belief that we can triumph over even the most extreme adversity. It is, after all, part of the American Dream – overcoming adversity, coming from humble beginnings, becoming hugely successful through sheer hard work – we’d like to believe anyone is capable of playing that role in their own fairy-tale existence. It’s the classic Horatio Alger story. After 9/11, President Bush exploited that idea and used it to deliver a speech to “prove” his leadership skills – claiming that America and Americans were strong enough to overcome the unspeakable, deadly deed 16 terrorists had brought upon us.

Now Mr. Bush attempts to exploit this idea once again in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Here is the text of his remarks. What he doesn’t realize is that the stakes are different this time. He cannot tell Americans that “we will overcome”, ask for private sector donations, and sit back and expect Americans to support him and his lack of action.

This time, he cannot truthfully say that this was never expected. His now infamous “I don’t think anyone expected the levees to break” comment has shades of “I don’t think anyone expected planes to fly into the Twin Towers”. He made these statements despite numerous meteorological reports and studies with regard to the former, and an infamous August brief sent to his Crawford ranch in the case of the latter. The nation was willing to look past his negligence in the case of 9/11 – terrorist attacks, in the minds of the average person, are difficult to predict and understand. The nation also desperately wanted to believe it had a strong leader it could unite behind who would protect the nation from further harm.

This time, the electorate will not afford him such a courtesy. There are three reasons for this.
 This time, everyone was privy to the information regarding the intensity of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans’ vulnerability. The weather reports were all over the media, not delivered in some top secret memo only to the president. We were all aware it was coming and we were all cognizant of the implications of a category 5 hurricane hitting a city that lies below sea-level.
 Secondly, this time, Mr. Bush failed to respond at all. Sure, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, his did not fly directly to ground zero, but he did at least acknowledge the incident. After Katrina hit, he and other high-ranking members of his administration continued their vacations with ostensibly no concern for the people of the Gulf coast states. They came up with feeble excuses for the lack of rescue and recovery operations that should have been put into action immediately after the storm, if not before.
 And finally, this time, the media did not let President Bush off the hook. While the federal government came up with pathetic excuses for why FEMA and the National Guard could not get to the people trapped in the city, the news networks had no trouble getting there and broadcasting the suffering. All Americans saw on TV was their fellow citizens fighting for their lives under excruciating circumstances while their leaders attending plays and accepted gifts without a care for the less fortunate.

Mr. Bush may think that he will once again be able to jack up his approval ratings following a national disaster by uttering a couple of words about the American spirit triumphing over all obstacles and orchestrating a photo-op, but the American people will not stand for more empty rhetoric while its citizens are in peril.

Posted by Sam Clemens at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At some point, you have to feel as though even Karl Rove, the King of Spin for this administration, can’t successfully twist the words and actions of his employers in order to paint a rosy portrait. For an administration that has received bipartisan admiration, if for nothing else, its ability to spin any issue and somehow keep President Bush’s approval ratings buoyant despite innumerable deficiencies, they’ve managed to commit blunder after blunder in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, as news stations around the country entered the zone of devastation and pictures of the storm’s refugees living in filthy and dangerous conditions were flashing across TV sets all over the nation, President Bush, still on vacation, jumped on a plane and flew to… California, where he participated in a photo-op and accepted a guitar as a gift. How is it that no one on his crack public relations team saw the obvious comparison to Nero’s fiddle that would soon appear on so many Web sites? He followed that up with a visit to the storm ravaged areas of the south, where he tried desperately, and painfully for those of us watching at home, to create a photo-op – another bullhorn moment – and find some words that would unite the nation behind him. Instead, he rambled about how Trent Lott had lost one of many houses and how he was looking forward to that particular rebuilding effort so the two of them could sit on a new porch.

Then there was the Condi Rice debacle. She was caught shopping for pricey shoes in New York City and taking in a Broadway play while in New Orleans, 25,000 people descended on a convention center and waited days for food, clean water, evacuation buses – some sign, any sign, that their government had not forgotten about them. I have no p.r. experience, but even I could foresee that her carefree jaunt in the Big Apple would not play well in the court of public opinion. It is incomprehensible that neither she nor her handlers paused to consider how her actions would be perceived, that she may appear uncaring.

Then there was Michael Brown’s statement implying that those remaining in New Orleans chose to stay there. Apparently the idea that anyone might not be able to financially afford to leave their home had not occurred to him, nor had he stopped to consider those in hospitals or the elderly and invalid who were housebound.

Next in this parade of faux pas was former First Lady Barbara Bush who commented (chuckling) that the evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston were better off living in the sports dome, given their underprivileged backgrounds. And the latest sleight to those suffering the wrath of this storm was present First Lady Laura Bush’s statement on CNN where she repeatedly referred to it as “Hurricane Karina”. Misspeaking once is perhaps forgivable, but twice? Given the sheer volume of news coverage the storm has received, it is unbelievable that she has not paid enough attention to even know its name. You know you’ve got perception problems when First Ladies – generally brought in as the “kindler, gentler” face of government – speak words that betray their side’s apathy and worse yet, disdain, for the evacuees. You have to think that Karl Rove is hoping these people just shut their mouths so he doesn’t have to continue to work overtime.

One of the biggest criticisms of this administration is that they appear to lack empathy and a “common touch”. President Bush has worked hard to cultivate an image as a man of the people, referring to his supposed Texas cowboy roots at every possible chance. However, it is painfully clear from their actions and words that this administration cannot relate to the problems of those Americans who are most in need of government assistance. Almost more disturbingly, they appear not to even care. Thanks to some of their policy initiatives, there has always been an implied indifference to the day-to-day problems of a vast segment of the population. But never before has their apathy been this transparent.

Posted by Sam Clemens at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)