More Post-Katrina Lies...As If We Need More!

Remember all the horrible crimes that took place during Hurricane Katrina? [1] Then all the subsequent attempts by the media [2]to prove that first, no such crimes occurred and more importantly, they were invented by supposedly racist people hoping to, I don’t know, keep the Black man down?

Well they’re back…with a vengeance.

The article is titled The Grinning Skull…the homicides you didn’t hear about in Hurricane Katrina [3] by Rebecca Solnit, a San Francisco based writer.

It’s been published by a group named TomDispatch.com [4]; a peculiar (and rather large) group of writers who claim to be an antidote to Main Stream Media or as they say:

“Tomdispatch.com is for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our post-9/11 world and a clear sense of how our imperial globe actually works.”

Apparently they also market to anyone seeking unabashedly deceitful garbage!

Solnit began her novel…sorry, I mean article, with this:

“While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river.”

You see, I was sent this article by Peter Brimelow for a specific reason: My brother-in-law is a member of the Louisiana National Guard and was working inside the Superdome when, according to Solnit, many of these “imaginary” crimes took place.

Imaginary murder, imaginary rape…imaginary Black criminals.

I say Black criminals because inside the Superdome that night there were only a handful of White evacuees; a smattering of White men huddled together in the corners, surrounding the women to keep them from being next on the imaginary rape list.

According to my brother-in-law (and all the other guards working in New Orleans during that time) there was nothing imaginary at all about the crime spree that took place.

He says it was a horrifying and shockingly primitive.

Women and yes, even children could not use the rest rooms for fear of encountering one the many predators lurking in the dark recesses of unlighted stalls.

People with food were constantly beaten and robbed including the women in possession of nothing more than milk for their babies.

Any men who attempted to protect the women from oncoming rapists were beaten and left for dead; cut up, bleeding and begging for help.

Solnit makes claims like:

“The media demonized the city’s black population for crimes that turned out not to have happened…”

And…

“The widely reported violent crimes in the Superdome turned out to be little more than hysterical rumor, but they painted African-Americans as out-of-control savages at a critical moment.”

I have no idea where Ms. Solnit gets her information (she claims to have visited New Orleans a couple of times) and I really don’t know where she gets off spreading such lies—liberal pomposity must devour the conscience.

The truth is there were many, many victims in the Superdome that night; what she claims were “hysterical rumors” were actually incontrovertible truths and yes, the perpetrators happen to have been African-American.

But what if it was the other way around? You know, the victims Black and the perpetrators White?

Yeah, something tells me Ms. Solnit would be demanding victim restitution rather than criminal absolution.