Screw New Orleans
By Billy Dennis on January 18th, 2007 The New Orleans Saints are now America’s beloved underdog. It makes me wanna retch.
The Chicago Bears — who have been disrespected throughout the entire season despite their fantastic winning record –are suddenly the bullies in this drama. If the Bears lose Sunday’s conference championship game, it supposedly confirms what the naysayers have been saying all year. If the Bears win, well, then they are just bullies that snatched victory from the cuddly underdogs and helped prevent New Orleans‘ recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
What crap.
I agree with Phil Luciano, who writes that this is just a damn game. I’m sick of the guilt trip being laid on the rest of America over Katrina. This nation has been extremely generous with the the Gulf Coast communities that were hurt by the hurricane. The nation will continue to be generous. But generosity only goes so far. While most other communities have responded by taking responsibility for their own recovery, the New Orleans area has not. In places like Biloxi, MS, the residents rolled up their shit sleeves and went to work, knowing full well it could be a decade or more before the things are back to normal. In New Orleans, the response has leaned more toward sitting around in their misery, moaning and groaning that the government hasn’t done enough to make things go back to exactly the way they were before the Hurricane hit. The want the Big Easy back — with all the crime, debauchery and corruption — and the want their neighbors to pay for it.
I hope the Bears not only beat the Saints, I hope they deliver a beating so brutal and vicious, the entire friggin’ city sinks into a psychological and economic depression that they never friggin’ recover. Not that anyone could tell.
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Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Bill sez: “While most other communities have responded by taking responsibility for their own recovery, the New Orleans area has not. In (p)laces like Biloxi, MS, the residents have rolled up their sleeves and went to work… In New Orleans, the response has leaned more toward sitting around in their misery…”
I sez: I’ve went to Mississippi after the storm and my wife has made several trips south, including sojourns through Nawlins, itself. For once, I can’t argue with what you are saying.
“I’m sick of the guilt trip being laid on the rest of America over Katrina”
Hell, we all know it was strictly Bush’s fault.
Vonster: If you REALLY agree with my POV, the best thing you can do to support is is to not agree with it publicly. Thanks.
Wow a bit brutal, Billy. Yeah, it would be a great “rags to riches” story, but what does “In New Orleans, the response has leaned more toward sitting around in their misery, moaning and groaning that the government hasn’t done enough to make things go back to exactly the way they were before…” have to do with the Saints organization making wise choices in picking up Drew Brees and drafting Reggie Bush? There isn’t any doubt that the Bears, or almost any other team in the NFL, would be a hell of a lot better team if they would have done something similar. Do I want to see the Saints win..yeah, but not because of Katrina…it is because they are the underdog (nothing to do with Katrina), have never won it (nothing to do with Katrina) and I like Drew Brees as a player(also, nothing to do with Katrina). Do I think they will win? No. They aren’t that great of a team not to get the poop kicked out of them, but still “on any given day….” But if they figure out how to better fit Reggie into the scheme of things next year….. Maybe I, and a small handful of others, just view the whole thing for what it is: FOOTBALL!!!!! and not politics. The ‘85 Bears would have been bullies…the current Bears?????
I’m not the one who made the Bears/Saints game about hurricane relief and, therefore, also about politics. And politics is brutal. I’m more than happy to discuss this game in terms of players and their respective talents. It’s this whole “America should be behind the Saints because it will help these pitiful people recover” that makes me want to projectile vomit.
Two thoughts:
1) I’ll be cheering for the Bears; however watching the Seahawks run through their defense didn’t give me much reason for optimism. After all, NO packs a punishing 1-2 punch in their ground game. Stop Deuce up the middle and Bush (the other one
) will kill you on the outside.
2) As far as the New Orleans disaster goes, one should look at the whole picture. For example, many of the residents who were too poor to own private transportation attempted to walk out of the city but were turned back at the bridge.
http://citypages.com/databank/26/1294/article13694.asp?page=10
“We tried to walk out once, across the Mississippi River bridge. The military turned us back. They pointed their guns at us and told us to get back down [off] the fucking bridge. Made us feel like shit. Like shit. They told us the only way we could cross was if we had a car. They probably thought if we were gonna walk we was gonna steal. But we just wanted out. Eventually we came across a car that had the keys still in it, and we drove it across the bridge. They let us cross. We got to a pay phone, and we called our cousin Tony, and he drove from Baton Rouge to come get us.”
So things aren’t as simple as they might seem.
I was blissfully ignorant of this campaign by the Saints or by sports pundits, to make the Saints America’s underdog and all. I wish I still were.
That said, New Orleans got the worst of Katrina by far. Yes, lots of shit got destroyed in MS and other parts of LA, but only the Ninth Ward and other parts of NO proper sat soaking in shit (literally) for a week or more. It’s a lot harder to rebuild when your entire neighborhood is a chemical waste dump site.
Are they working hard enough by your standards? I guess not.
Second thought, sports pundits are often as annoying as political pundits. ‘Nuff said.
Truth hurts, bill.
New Orleans got self-inflicted damage. MS and AL did not.
“Nuff said.”
** grabbing the yellow B.S. flag and throwing it at Cgiselle **
Tony, by “self-inflicted damage” do you mean those levees that broke? Or the fact that they exist at all below sea level and right on the ocean? Seriously, wondering what you mean.
Sure, its a stupid place to have a city, but it was built a long time ago, before folks acquired our current system of zoning codes and logic. And it built itself into, for the most part, a beautiful center of culture and diversity.
The US Army built those levees, no?
//catching mouse’s flag and throwing it at Tony
You can try to blame the US Army all you want for building or maintaining (or failing to) the levees. But the argument just doesn’t hold water (pun intended).
The mere thought of building below sea level and holding back a flowing river to do so is plain old crazy. Whether the city has culture or not should never enter in to it, but that is the argument that people use in order to detract from the galacticaly stupid fact that the city was like 20 feet below the Mississippi River in some places. There is no such thing as permenant control of flowing water. The water ALWAYS wins, eventually.
Poor zoning codes? Sure. Who’s fault is that?
If there is anything to blame, it is the arrogance of mankind that we think we have ultimate power over the laws of nature and physics.
*After further review, the flag on the play stands.*
It is fine to cheer your team on but your total ignorance of what has been occurring in the gulf south for the last 16 months is stunning. I lived in New Orleans for 30 years. My mother lies a block off the beach in Pass Christian, Ms. Both places are testimony to abandonment by government. One is republican and one is democratic, both are hurting badly. It will be the shame of America for decades. But just keep listening to Rush and live in your pretend world. We do not have that luxury. Oh yeah, and by the way, GEAUX SAINTS! We love you!
And here’s another point:
If the Saints win the Super Bowl, the franchise will be worth more money, meaning that scumbag of an owner would happily move the team.
Bush’s fault! Awk! Bush’s fault!
Total ignorance? Mouse are you gonna let this one slide?
Tony – nope!
Doctorj sez: “total ignorance of what has been occurring in the gulf south for the last 16 months ”
I sez: Yep, total ignorance. My wife made her first trip south 5 days after the storm. (Kudos to Tony and Mrs. Tony who helped get stuff together for the trip – we went from an idea to on the road in 72 hrs!). Her most recent trip was in December, where she and the group she helped found received an award as one of the most active relief groups in Southern Mississippi. Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian were the primary lcoations of their efforts. They often cooperated with groups based in and made trips into New Orleans. I made the trip, as well. Even my daughter, who was ten at the time, went down with us at one point and helped cook meals and clean up.
Someone here is displaying total “total ignorance,” and it isn’t me and it isn’t Tony.
IT’S JUST A DAMN FOOTBALL GAME!
Thank you.
“In laces like Biloxi, MS, the residents have rolled up their sleeves and went to work…”
Perhaps with a better grasp of grammar you would sound something less of a moron. -E. Baxter, New Orleans
Yeah, you know SOOOO much. I have gutted houses. Does that make me an expert in construction? Get a grip and listen to the people living it. You, sir, don’t have a clue. You can spin the spin all you want and it doesn’t change the conditions that are there for anyone with eyeballs to see. And many, many people from all over the world see it everyday to the ever lasting shame of this nation.
re: Tony says:
I don’t think you have your facts straight.
1 This city was built before an Army Corps of Engineers.
2. The river is not nor has ever been the issue with flooding. The RIVER levees have never failed.
3. 20 feet under water?? How stupid are you?
4. The levees and the industrial canal are 100% the fault and the responsibility of the Corps. They made these fateful decisions over the past years, most times without our consent. We get no vote on where the levees go.
5. If the Corps had left us alone we would not have had those levees or the industrial canal, which was built in 1964 and responsible for flooding the 9th ward and St. Bernard Parish. 1964 is 265 years after Bienville settled this city.
6. Your argument does not hold water-pun intended.
Also:
The ocean is nowhere near here. How can you comment on a place when you don’t even know where it is?
The Army Corps of Engineers decided to try to control the water flow, not the citizens of this city.
What’s the matter, is a little reason too much too handle? I reread your initial comment Billy and it occurs to me that you seem very bitter about N.O.
I perused the peoriapundit site today and it seems you have a great little town, but you really need some perspective. I could fill your blog with hateful, bitter assumptions about your town but you see I feel that everyone should be happy and proud of where they live.
Your hateful rambling seems a little out of context with a simple football match. You need to have some fun-more fun than a six pack of Diet Coke.
At dinner tonight my mother proposed that you should come to N.O. and see what a great place this is. Yes, I live with my mother. Or rather she lives with me, since this 70 year old woman lost her house and everything in it to the flood. Even though she lost every baby picture, every love letter, every Christmas ornament she can still feel pity for you.
So Billy, come to Mardi Gras. Not the tourist-Bourbon St-Mardi Gras but the one the locals celebrate, you will never be the same.
Simply put, look at all the trailers that were given out? Has anyone look at the condition of them? I personally have as I pulled them for FEMA. They just take it for granted and trash our American Tax Dollars. Look at Hurricane Andrew. The relief they recieved was zip in comparison but they never blamed everything on the government. Its not the Governments Job to rebuild the city. Who ever thought it was? Just a bunch of people looking for a hand out. Sadly, now many have went to Houston and the crime has sky rocketed here. We dont want them here, please take the 160K people back to New Orleans. The Houston top 10 most wanted are mostly from New Orleans. Its a fact, look it up. I agree with Billy, these people need to fix their own problems instead of looking for everyone else in America to do it for them. Its getting to the point where America is getting sick of New Orleans.