Mr. Bush's Katrina timeline

President Bush is in Mississippi and Louisiana this week, making Katrina anniversary appearances, but it doesn’t count.

When it did count, or could have counted, a year ago, the president was elsewhere.

On Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005, as national television watched Katrina spinning up to full strength in the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said that, in a worst-case scenario, storm surge would sweep past the levees and flood the city with 18 feet of water. Nagin was exploring the idea of ordering a mandatory evacuation. Making matters worse, at least 100,000 people in the city lacked the transportation to get out of town. Nagin said the Superdome might be used as a shelter of last resort for people who had no cars, with city bus pick-up points around New Orleans. “This is not a test,” Nagin said. “This is the real deal.”

On Sunday, Aug. 28, Mayor Nagin said, “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.” Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. In Crawford, Texas, at the Vacation White House, President Bush declared a state of emergency for the Gulf Coast, an action that cleared the way for immediate federal aid. “We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities,” he said. The president participated in a videoconference with disaster management officials, and he spoke by telephone with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. FEMA director Michael Brown took up a position in Baton Rouge, north of New Orleans. FEMA started to position water, ice and military rations to points in the Southeast. Thousands of New Orleans residents went to the Superdome.

On Monday, Aug. 29, the hurricane made landfall south of New Orleans at 6 a.m. NBC’s Brian Williams reported from inside the Superdome as winds and rain penetrated its roof. A levee was reported breached, and flood waters gushed into the city. President Bush was flying from Texas to California, where he made a speech on the new Medicare program at a senior center in Rancho Cucamonga. He and Mrs. Bush then flew to the North Island Navy base in Coronado in the afternoon and rode in a motorcade to the Hotel del Coronado.

On Tuesday morning, Aug. 30, 80 percent of New Orleans was under water after multiple levee failures. President Bush made a speech at North Island Naval Air Station in which he compared the Iraq war to World War II. The media focus was almost completely on the New Orleans disaster. “The scope of the catastrophe caught the city by surprise,” reported The New York Times. “A certainly sense of relief that was felt on Monday afternoon, after the eye of the storm swept east of New Orleans, proved cruelly illusory, as authorities and residents woke up Tuesday to a more horrifying result than had been anticipated.” “The magnitude of the situation is untenable,” said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. “It’s just heartbreaking.” During the day, President Bush said he would cut short his vacation and fly back to Washington. He left San Diego and flew back to Crawford.

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, looting was widespread in New Orleans and the atmosphere increasingly hostile. Some of the looting was of emergency supplies. Food, water and ice were not reaching refugees stranded in New Orleans. Reports from the Superdome were horrifying. “A major American city all but disintegrated yesterday,” said the AP. President Bush departed Waco, Texas, in Air Force One, instructing the pilot to overfly New Orleans and the Gulf Coast devastation. A photo, now famous, is taken of the president looking out of the airplane’s window at the wreckage. The plane continues on to Washington, D.C., where the president later said, “We’re dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation’s history. I’m confident that with time you’ll get your life back in order, new communities will flourish, the great city of New Orleans will get back on its feet and America will be a stronger place for it.”

Thursday morning, Sept. 1, the AP reported that “Criticism of the federal response to the most sweeping natural disaster in U.S. history rose to a fever pitch. Some who survived Katrina’s assault Monday died of neglect in the ruins of their homes, on city streets and at New Orleans’ Superdome and convention center.” New Orleans mayor Nagin issued “a desperate SOS.” The White House announced Bush would tour the area Friday.

On Friday morning, Sept. 2, President Bush flew on Air Force One into Mobile Regional Airport: At a briefing there, he spoke the famous line to FEMA director Michael Brown: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

The president toured sites in Alabama and Mississippi and was driven through New Orleans. But he was a day late and a dollar short. The time for him to be on the ground in New Orleans was Tuesday, or at the latest, Wednesday morning. He may not have actually been able to achieve anything, but he would have at least been perceived as doing something, and that would have made all the difference, to us, and to him. Now, a year later, the world might be a different place. But it’s not.

The 9/11 Comic Book

Texans of my generation, looking at the “9-11 Comic Book,” will instantly remember their 7th grade Texas History class. A comic book was used then, too, to teach history.

The comic book depicted the struggles in 1836, at the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto, that brought about the defeat of Santa Anna’s armies that won independence for Texas from Mexico. I don’t remember how the book was bound, or presented, but the pages looked just like the pages of a comic book you would buy at the drugstore.

As far as I know, the information was factual, but obviously the action in the drawings was, by definition, dramatized, simply by bringing the events “to life.” We proceeded through graphic scenes of battle, and preparations for battle, that were seen only by people who were actually there.

I liked the book. It was as professionally drawn as any commercial comic book you could buy. The Texans were portrayed as the good guys, and the Mexicans were the bad guys, the same bias that ultimately came through in print texts, though it became much more vivid in comic book form. I’m sure there is an archive of complaints about that, and I have a query in to the Texas State Historical Association.

Also included were the typical sound effects (“Blam!” “Boom!” “Whoosh!”) common to commercial comic books. I don’t remember any objections to that at the time – we were, after all, reading the book under the direction of educational professionals – and we had all seen and heard similar sound recreations in the movie theaters.

I have already ordered a copy of the 9-11 book, real name “The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation,” by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. If you want to look at it, slate.com is excerpting it, a chapter a day, until Sept. 7. It is definitely a comic book, very well done, but with liberties of style that are raising the question, “Should they be doing this?” Bringing to dramatized life events that occurred in 1836 are one thing, but bringing to dramatized life the battle to take back Flight 93 is something else.

Yes, there are film and video interpretations of that battle, but people are acclimated to seeing drama on a screen one minute, and then allowing that same screen to show them comedy. Our expectations of comic books are less flexible. Unless, of course, you were a Texan in a 7th-grade Texas History class in the 1950s. I realize that citing the Texas educational system does not amount to an overwhelming endorsement for teaching history in comic books, but it has provided that demographic specific flexibility, that others won’t have, when they look at the 9-11 book for the first time.

The comic book simplifies what happened, and that could be interpreted as disrespect. It is also, for better or worse, becoming typical of how Americans receive all their information: there is a short, visual, simplified version, and a long, print version that is as complex as the subject matter requires. Right now, we see the short, visual version on television, with the tease at the end, “For more about this story, go to our Website at www.cbs.com.” At the Website is the long, complex, print version. Both stories have been written by the same reporter. This semester, in my classrooms, as in all the semesters for the last three or four years, I will teach my journalism students how to write both the visual and print stories, because they won’t get hired anywhere if they don’t know how to do both. In fact, pretty soon, the visual (TV) and print (newspapers) mediums will merge, the TV remote will become a mouse also, and at the end of the visual story on the screen, there won’t be a tease, but a link directly to the Website.

I think this is a good thing. It better be, because it is inevitable. I think it is good because the short, visual version always lacks depth. You obtain depth through the print version. Linking them makes perfect sense. That’s why I think the 9-11 comic book is legitimate, and valuable. It is the short, simplified visual version of the longer, extremely complex, print version that, for the time being, is the document of record of an event that we will be a long time understanding.

A good airline story

On the shelf behind the toilet in our bathroom sits a roll of toilet paper autographed by Herb Kelleher, founder, former CEO and now executive president, of Southwest Airlines.

Actually, this is “Son of Roll.” There was an earlier Herb Kelleher roll that came to me in events initiated in the 1990s by Jim Price, a native of Childress, Texas, living in San Diego. Jim was in labor relations and traveled a lot, up and down California, mostly on Southwest flights. I knew Jim Price from the media ramble in San Diego, and Jim knew Herb Kelleher, knew him well enough to send him a personal letter of complaint about his airline.

Jim told Herb he had flown Southwest faithfully, “but no more,” Jim said, until Southwest corrected the toilet paper feed on its fleet. At present, Jim said, the paper in the airplane lavatories fed over the top. Everyone with any sense knows it should feed off the bottom. I received a copy of the letter, as one who, Jim sensed from knowing me, would have a definite opinion about toilet paper feeds. Immediately I wrote a column for my paper, The San Diego Union, saying what a great guy Jim Price was, but he was dead wrong about the toilet paper, which should always feed over the top, never off the bottom.

The column found its way to Dallas, because several days later I received a congratulatory letter from Herb Kelleher, along with a roll of Scott tissue, autographed on the wrapper by Mr. Kelleher himself. This I displayed in the bathroom for the longest time, until a new cleaning lady took the roll from the shelf behind the toilet, pulled off the wrapper and threw it away, and installed the roll on the dispenser.

I was mortified, but of course it was my own fault, that the cleaning lady didn’t know the roll for what it was.

Now into the picture comes Dr. Ted Martinez, who until last December was president of Grossmont College, where I teach journalism. At that time, the college district board decided not to renew his contract. It was unpleasant for us. Dr. Martinez was much respected by faculty and staff, as an involved, effective, innovative, president. The board was, well, the board. Faculty and staff were surprised and tickled to death when, in January, Dr. Martinez accepted a high-level job – much higher and infinitely more visible than the Grossmont presidency – in the administration of the new San Diego mayor, Jerry Sanders. I wrote a column about that for San Diego’s online newspaper, voiceofsandiego.org.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a voiceofsandiego column about the ongoing debate (60 years now) concerning a new San Diego airport to replace Lindbergh Field. In that column I expressed great affection for Southwest Airlines, and included a mention of the long-lost Herb Kelleher toilet paper.

This week, we got a call from Dr. Martinez. I wasn’t home, so he told Karen who he was and that he and his wife, Lidia, had read the two voiceofsandiego columns, and they had a surprise for me. As they chatted, Dr. Martinez told Karen that Lidia was the California marketing director for Southwest Airlines. I may have known that, but I had forgotten.

Last night they came over, and Lidia, just back from company meetings in Dallas, presented me a roll of Scott tissue, inscribed on the wrapper: “For Emergency Use Only!” And signed by Herb Kelleher. In a brief installation ceremony, we placed it on the ledge behind the toilet. My next stop is Bed, Bath and Beyond, to get a glass or acrylic case for it. Herb sent a letter, too, and I thought about framing it and hanging it above the toilet paper, but that would probably be a bit much.

Flat truth about TV

When the public knows how the media works, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

Television as we know it is on the way out.

“After the holidays, the days of picture-tube TVs are gone,” a CostCo buyer told The New York Times. “One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TVs.”

Demand is dropping, he said. Consumers want the new, flat-panel television screens that offer better resolution with their plasma or liquid-crystal displays.

From what I have seen of them in the stores, I wouldn’t mind one myself, but there are a couple of obstacles. One is the price, and even if the price were acceptable, I don’t know where we would put the thing when we got it home. It won’t fit in our entertainment center, which really is about to become a dinosaur in the American living room.

If we take the entertainment center out, what do we do with it? In weekends after next year, are we to join lines of citizens at U-Haul counters, renting a trailer to join processions of vehicles hauling our entertainment centers, like worn-out artillery caissons, to the landfills? If so, how quickly will the landfills reach capacity and close? No, the landfill is not an environmentally reasonable solution.

Will we muscle it out to the patio, and bust it into kindling? I hate to do that to a perfectly good piece of expensive furniture that we have only had a few years.

And if we did, what would we do with the VCR, the DVD player, the receiver-amplifier, the tape deck, and the equalizer? And the passel of CDs and VHS tapes in the bottom drawers, poking their corners out of the dust bunnies?

We are looking at a new entertainment center, built to flat-screen specs, or we could just tear out a living room wall and install built-ins, at which time bringing home a new, flat-screen TV is costing anywhere from $4,000 to $25,000.

Fortunately, our old TV is relatively new and should be fine until well beyond the time the manufacturers stop making replacement parts. If we open a special flat-screen TV with furniture and accessories savings account now, it is possible we could have the money at the end of the approximately four years we have left before the broadcasters are providing signals that our old cathode-ray tube TVs will not accept. By then, Father Joe will have figured out a way to build houses out of old entertainment centers, so that problem will be solved. The old TV itself – actually, we have four old TVs in the house – will be recycled.

We’re going to hold short of remodeling the living room for the new flat-panel TV, even though new homes being built now are all designed around a logical place to position flat-panel screens. In a decade, those spaces will make nice art walls, when flat-panel TVs become dinosaurs – one thing about them, they will stack neatly in the landfills – and the next technology arrives.

I am 63 years old, meaning my lifetime is about to exceed the lifespan of the old TVs, the big-tube consoles and portables that started coming into living rooms in the late 1940s. I remember how to adjust the Channel Master, the horizontal hold, the vertical hold, the brightness, the contrast, and the fine tune knob (for UHF). I like telling my students about watching TV in the 1950s, and watching Channel 9, then clicking the big knob over to Channel 12, and rotating the antenna, adjusting the holds and the fine tune, and sitting down for half an hour until it was time to get up and click back to Channel 9 and watch the black-and-white picture shrivel into electronic dust bunnies until the holds were adjusted back to Channel 9 again.

It is informative to look back 50 years, and describe a TV set then, and now turn around and look forward 50 years, and describe the TV set of 2056. I truly believe – and this may actually happen in my lifetime – that media communications in the future will be conducted through sensors we carry around with us, under the skin somewhere, or in a section in the brain, that will project images and sounds from the inside-out, into our eyes and ears, and simply with a thought, we will change channels, or turn off the TV and listen to music for awhile.

I don’t think I am going to like it, but obviously we have no choice. A couple of years from now, we will have a flat-panel TV, like it or not.