Katrina Anniversary: Dirty Pool

Katrina-Two-Houses

It’s quite a difference working the news cycle from Barcelona, having long “played catch up” from L.A. With the first images from Bush’s Gulf trip just coming in now, however, it will be just past the dinner hour (meaning, around midnight) before I can start analyzing a good cross section of pics. To my benefit, though, I can get up in the morning, crunch for a couple hours, and still have a post put together before the first Times hits the NYC pavement.

In the meantime, this shot from New Orleans on Monday’s newswire does a superior job previewing the thematic pixel war between Bush and the Democrats over the next few days. Here’s the caption, which works wonderfully as metaphor:

One home has a clean swimming pool as the pool next door is still filled with dirty water after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly one year ago in New Orleans. Members of Congress toured the city Monday and President Bush was headed for the region to see the state of recovery efforts one year after the city was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

(image: Alex Brandon/AP. August 28, 2006. New Orleans. Via YahooNews.)

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Katrina Anniversary: The Art Of Misery

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NrkeyQueer

Yeah, because it was the people with pools in their back yard I was really worried about. Thanks, AP.
Mark C.

No matter if you had/have a swimming pool or not, the levee failure in New Orleans has everyone living in a trailer that feels like the size of a coffin. Notice the two white blocks?
Government incompetence has equalized New Orleans in a way (a bad way). This photo is a visual explanation of why populism will gain great momentum in the coming years (see Huey Long and the 1927 flood).
By the way, New Orleans was not ravaged by Katrina, bur rather the Army Corp of Engineers.
http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez

Is it me…or are those houses huge? Damn.
Trinary

The one dirty pool is sort of the “Few Bad Apples” way of dealing with the devestation.
It’s hard spinning a disaster Bush helped cause (once again by ignoring memos and warnings made in person) into a positive thing. So it’s time to make the problem look small and easy to dismiss. “Look over here. This one rich guy’s pool is dirty. That’s all that happened.” I’m sure many ultra-conservative blogs are already practically claiming that Katrina never happened.
But at least it’s not another photo of a black person carrying their personal belongings with a caption calling them a looter. Seeing those makes me sick to my stomach.
Brian Boru

It must have been 26 August when Gov. Blanco gave Bush a daily briefing that said “Hurricane Katrina is determined to do major major damage to the Gulf Coast” and he said “f– that, I’m going to go eat some cake with Senator Slander My Wife and Daughter and I’ll Still Love Ya.
Seriously, the pool on the right is probably hatching enough ’squitoes to infect half the city with West Nile virus. Can’t they at least put a lid on the damn thing?
itwasntme

I question the electricity availablity – was one house on one electrical grid and the other house not on that grid? Both houses have FEMA trailers, tho, so some other thoughts come to mind: house on left: young couple. House on right: 75 year-old retiree.
I don’t ask why Idiot Bush hasn’t organized some national “Help Corps” a la Peace Corps to get the gulf fixed up. He is unaware that he can call on the best in us, because that isn’t the way he sees people. I think serving for reasons of conscience, not for profit, is unknown to this man.
readytoblowagasket

This photo is has nice visual symmetry (and convenient thematic asymmetry) but it is distant (literally) and therefore completely unemotional. The caption is no help either: “Dirty water” doesn’t begin to describe the mold-infested pool of death on the right. Also, I’m sure Congress won’t have toured these backyards. Or inside a FEMA trailer housing an extended family of 10. It reminds me of a toy train set, like real people don’t live here. Whoever lives on the right is going to have to fix the place up or face the consequences:
“The anniversary falls on the same day as a deadline, imposed by the City Council, for many New Orleans residents to gut or otherwise secure and clean up their damaged houses.”
[. . .]
“People who don’t gut or clean up after being put on notice face a range of possible penalties, from liens on their property to the seizure or destruction of homes. There is an appeals process.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,210765,00.html
Check out these two links below for articles about spectacular government incompetence and continued discrimination against the Katrina victims. (For the first link, scroll down until “In the News . . .” articles appear.) It’s hard to keep up with the sorry state of housing, medical care, schools, prisons, the courts, etc., in the affected areas.
http://www.ushrnetwork.org/page209.cfm
http://www.ushrnetwork.org/page228.cfm
But at least one of the casinos reopened!