ebonlock | Quote of the Day

You just cannot top this. Via Pandagon:

William Kristol:

William Kristol, the conservative publisher of The Weekly Standard, said of Mr. Bush: "I do think people think he could have showed stronger leadership." But Mr. Kristol expressed doubt that the hurricane would have much lasting effect on the president's personal and political fortunes, because "people are capable of saying, 'The president kind of screwed this one up, but I still basically agree with him.'"

Mr. Kristol added, "I think the Clinton administration would have done a better job in handling Hurricane Katrina, but I'm also glad Bush is president and not a Democrat."

And it would appear that the rising waters in NO flushed out a lot more than petroleum and sewage, it seems to have brought up a whole shitload of bigotry right along with it. Case in point:
Spreading the poison of bigotry

BATON ROUGE, La. -- They locked down the entrance doors Thursday at the Baton Rouge hotel where I'm staying alongside hundreds of New Orleans residents driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina.

"Because of the riots," the hotel managers explained. Armed Gunmen from New Orleans were headed this way, they had heard.

"It's the blacks," whispered one white woman in the elevator. "We always worried this would happen."

You know a lot of what I've been hearing lately makes me think back to my own childhood. I was raised in part by my grandmother and great grandparents on my mom's side, all from the South, and all with more than a hint of racism. It was not surprising to hear my great granddad spout off about "n-'s" screwing up the neighborhood. He wasn't an evil man, ignorant perhaps, but also one of the most loving men I've ever known in my life. I could never quite reconcile his bigotry and conviction that all people of color were somehow lower life forms with his gentleness, kindness, and endless patience with me and my sisters while we were growing up. It caused a vague unease that grew worse and worse the older I got.

It continues to bother me.

I don't want to hate the people who react this way, because I know that many of them probably are pretty decent. They're products of the society that they grew up in, the family that raised them, and their own inability to move beyond the prejudices that both instilled in them. And yet at the same time it makes me so fucking angry that all it takes is a few stupid, greedy criminals looting, raping and killing to undermine the progress we've made since the days of the Civil Rights movement.

Read more about this issue, far more eloquently discussed on Hullabaloo:

I don't honestly think there is any racist conspiracy at work. There doesn't need to be. All it takes is a reactivation of long held racist beliefs and attitudes --- attitudes that led the president to say that they had "secured" the convention center on Friday night --- which we all saw in that amazing FoxNews footage actually meant that the desperate survivors had been locked inside the sweltering hellhole. It was the attitude that had tourists staying at the Hyatt hotel being given special dispensation to go to the head of the lines at the Superdome. It was the attitude that made my racist companions disgusted by the "animals" at the convention center because they were living in filth fail to grasp that these people had been expecting to be rescued at any moment for more than four days.

It's that attitude that led these people to talk endlessly about rape with lurid imagery and breathless, barely contained excitement. This too is part of the American lizard brain.

I have no doubt that there was criminality on the streets of New Orleans. When the law disappears, that's what happens. But when you looks closely at our history you see that whenever large numbers of african americans are featured, this is the kind of thing that is said and thought and done. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't believe it or that criminals shouldn't be brought to justice. But our history suggests that when we hear reports of cops gunning down looters, snipers and rapists in the street, we should at least maintain a normal skepticism. Far too often in our history it has been shown later that things were not as they seemed at the time.