It's Harry Shearer!
When he's away...is loving New Orleans just a romantic notion? Fuck no!
"We have lost the media battle regarding the story of what has happened to us." He has spent a lot of time and energy restating the facts over and over again.
The media's "main bias is towards laziness".
"If they could get Geraldo Rivera in here why couldn't they get food and water?"
The media never got to Lakeview, or St Bernard, or any place that wasn't close to an off ramp on the interstate. They follow a predetermined "template" in reporting on stories such as Katrina and the Federal Flood that is still dictating what the rest of the country thinks about New Orleans.
As bloggers, we have to write what we do because nobody else is going to.
Keep stating the factual context of 8-29-05 and after.
Daily pressure is shared by bloggers and journalists for news, news, news all the time. BUT, in his position blogging for HuffPo, he feels he has the time to keep the facts ever-present and not just publish something because it makes a good story, whether it is true or not.
Protection of sources is always a complicated relationship, as sources have an agenda as well in feeding information.
On the suggestion from HuffPo commenters that Shearer take his beef about New Orleans direct to Obama, he put on his best Edward Burns and talked of "placing a nuclear plant in every city".
He tried to get in touch through friends, nothing happened, then was contacted by a David Washington and laid out why he had problems with the Corps' protection of the city. Washington connected him to a Corps' PR person. The PR person connected him to Janet Woodcaye "Gulf Coast Recovery Czar": no power in the job, and it expires in a month. Shearer put her in touch with a fellow who has great ideas about how to live with water instead of being at war with it. It was all he could do. That marked the end of his adventure with "the inside game", which he will be posting about as soon as he can.
The man of many talents and voices is still keeping the light on on what happened and is still happening here. What's important is not just to tell what happened and what is happening, but WHY IT MATTERS.
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