03
Sep
What does “not acceptable” mean to Katrina’s victims?
Before leaving Washington Friday for a close-up look at the wasteland of the Gulf Coast, president Bush said the federal rescue and relief effort to that point was “not acceptable.” It seemed an attempt to disassociate himself from what was after all a Bush administration effort, directed by Bush appointees.
But what exactly does “not acceptable” mean? Does it mean someone will be fired, perhaps the wholly unqualified Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) chief and former estate attorney Michael Brown, or Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, or some other, more random Michael?
If past is prologue, the answer is no. Bush administration officials don’t get fired for underperforming; if they don’t get promoted for it, they at least keep their jobs. They occasionally get fired or publicly humiliated for speaking out of turn, but if you work for Bush and screw the pooch, you’re still good no matter how loudly it howls.
So “not acceptable” doesn’t mean you’re no longer accepted from an employment standpoint; it just means you owe the boss a big one. Maybe a deputy assistant undersecretary will take a fall, but even that seems unlikely.
What about the rescue workers, then? Does “not acceptable” mean an involuntary career change for them?
Let’s hope not. Working under the direction of someone who doesn’t seem to know what he or she is doing oughn’t to be a firing offense. If it were, the only people left in government would be George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.
No: For those directly involved in the rescue effort, “not acceptable” means nightmares or post-traumatic stress disorder or whatever else might afflict, say, a National Guard member who has to stand by and watch refugees die because the medical teams haven’t yet arrived, or one piloting a boat past corpses bobbing in the flood. That’s not acceptable, but you have to accept it if you want to stay alive.
For the victims of the storm, “not acceptable” is the ultimate irrelevancy. Nothing is unacceptable. Living or dead, they have to accept what happened. Because it did happen, and it will always have happened, and they will always have had to accept it.
“Not acceptable” is what a teacher scribbles on a sloppy book report. It implies do-overs. If you do a job and it’s not acceptable, you do it over or you get fired and someone else does it over.
But none of these past days, and none of the days and months and years ahead will be unacceptable for anyone left alive who wants to live. Nobody gets do-overs.
So what does not “not acceptable” mean?
Not a damned thing.
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Bush clarified his ‘not acceptable’ statement in answer to a reporter’s question a little later on. He said that he meant that the security situation in New Orleans was ‘not acceptable.’
So when the National Guard came in, they locked down the only exit out of the city and set up checkpoints to prevent people from leaving.
That’s what he meant by ‘not acceptable.’
September 3rd, 2005 at 1:37 am.
http://www.gorillamask.net/
Check out the top two pictures. (This says it all about where we are in America in 2005)
September 3rd, 2005 at 3:37 pmIf Bush officials were fired for underperforming, would not it logically follow that the lead official would resign?
You know, if one was consistent.
September 3rd, 2005 at 7:12 pmWould everybody please stop saying refugees!! Yes it’s nitpicking but, ‘taking refuge’ from somthing or a ‘place of refuge’ have differnent meaning than “refugee”. Refuge is more of a general term, while the word refugee implies some persecution of a political kind that is often associated with conflict. Usually religious or more likely, all out war.
September 3rd, 2005 at 7:22 pmI suppose we could go with “displaced persons,” or “DPs” for short. “Survivors” or “victims” don’t really convey the scale of the disaster.
September 3rd, 2005 at 7:33 pmSorry about my outburst. I was having a bad day. How about indefinitely homeless or elementally challenged? ‘$*#@!&$ for life’ perhaps? ‘Starving’? ‘Dying’? ‘huddled masses’? Most of the media is doing the ‘refugee’ thing, I’m curious to see if they make a move toward a kinder friendlier label as per “struggle against extremism”.
September 4th, 2005 at 3:15 am