Hi. I watched the game last Monday, a few days after welcoming home from NO a young friend I've known all her life after a surprise (to her parents) trip to help the rebuilding of the 9th ward, and just before returning to her sophmore year in college. Her slides and description mirror the contrast described so well in this essay, to which I'll only add the little vignette of Spike Lee sitting in shocked silence when asked by the half-time jock team to provide a short summation of how to 'fix' the city. Troy Aikman finally said 'I guess there's too much to do for a short answer' and Spike nodded. Troy, though, allowed as the rebuilding of the business community and 'this great stadium' was a good start. Zirin speaks to Troy's palliative in his second paragraph - the stadium was rebuilt with a huge gift by FEMA, which is providing no water, electricity, or rebuilding funds for the devastated, dispersed poor. I wish you could see the slides. Ed (embarassed Bruin alum, jock and Troy fan)
Different setting, similar theme in the Elmo essay, then sung to by Ross Altman and Carolyn Hester in tonight's event. Check it out. --- Big Easy Blues: The Saints and the Superdome By Dave Zirin October 16, 2006, The Nation http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/southpaw New Orleans is a city that suffers in silence. These days, it feels like a city being strangled in slow motion, a city whose current condition makes a lie of every political platitude preached over the past year. Yet ESPN spent four hours Monday trying to make us believe that the Crescent City--through the magic of sports and the return of the New Orleans Saints--is on the verge of resurrection. The symbol of deliverance, we were told repeatedly during the broadcast, was the $185 million renovation of the Louisiana Superdome, $94 million of which came from FEMA. Never mind that the Dome's adjoining mall and hotel are still shuttered or that the city hasn't seen that kind of money spent on low- income housing destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The road back for the Big Easy begins in the Dome. As one ESPN talking head solemnly told us, "The most daunting task is to scrub away memories of the Superdome as a cesspool of human misery." That recalled the time when the football stadium became the homeless shelter from hell for 30,000 of New Orleans's poorest residents, huddled together in conditions Jesse Jackson likened to "the hull of a slave ship." Now we are asked to believe the memories are being "scrubbed away." But the reality of refugee apartheid is hardly a memory. The game was held hostage to the awkward fact that the folks starring in ESPN's video montages of last year's "cesspool" were almost entirely black and the football fans in the stands were overwhelmingly white. But recognizing this would contradict the infomercial for the new Big Easy that was designed to appeal to the typical family, which finds gumbo too spicy and thinks of soul as something consumed with tartar sauce. This message found its way into every aspect of ESPN's coverage. In the city that gave us the Marsalis family and the Neville brothers, the pregame entertainment was an incoherent duet featuring those icons of corporate rock, Green Day and U2, complete with the Irish-born Ego formally known as Bono shouting, "I am an American!" The two artists who best represent New Orleans's authentic musical tradition, Irma Thomas and Alvin Toussaint, were left to perform the national anthem, a melody so ponderous it could exorcise the soul from Aretha Franklin. This selling of McOrleans continued when one announcer called the area outside the tourist zone "a graveyard of a community that no longer exists." But even in the most devastated parts of the city, that graveyard stubbornly throbs with life. As Josh Peter, writing from the Lower Ninth Ward for Yahoo Sports reported, "A group of 30 people gathered to watch the game next to a FEMA trailer. There were residents struggling to rebuild their homes and volunteers there to help them sharing red beans and rice. It was a congregation cheering as if it were inside the Superdome instead of inside a garage... 'We're still here,' Deborah Massey snapped at the TV announcer. 'They can't get rid of us.'" The message behind the return of the Saints was tied together by the Godfather of No-Soul himself, former President George H.W. Bush, who declared that "the pessimists who said New Orleans wouldn't come back are wrong, and the optimists who dug in are doing great!" Bush the Elder was then asked what he believed to be the great enduring lesson of the Katrina catastrophe. Anyone who hoped to hear "Don't hire a feckless fraternity buddy to run FEMA" was left disappointed. Instead we got: "The great lesson is the American spirit! And never give up on it! It's back and it's coming back more!" That spirit was certainly on display when Bush walked out to the fifty-yard line for the coin flip. As Daily Kos noted, when Bush senior came out to flip the coin, ESPN apparently shut off the sound of a booing crowd for a few seconds and played audio of fake cheers. After about ten seconds, the boos were audible and angry. There was reason for anger Monday night. There was also reason to cheer. The mood in the stadium was electric, and emotional, cathartic and wistful. I could feel Saints fans carrying their team to a 23-3 victory over the favored opponents, the Atlanta Falcons. I laughed and cheered upon seeing a big banner that read "Joe Horn for President"--both a caustic protest and a show of respect for the Saints wide receiver, who proudly says he wants to be "a voice for those who aren't heard." I felt a lump in my throat upon seeing the "Save Our Saints" sign, a reminder that for all the money spent on the Dome, Saints owner Tom Benson still threatens to move the team to more affluent shores. I shared the crowd's almost giddy love of quicksilver rookie Reggie Bush. And yes, it was nice to actually see a Bush raise up the spirit of New Orleans instead of crushing it. It's easy to understand why ESPN announcer and Gulf Coast native Robin Roberts said, "Tonight is about baby steps forward. People are so hungry for a little slice of their normal life." It's also easy to understand why a city that depends so crucially on the tourist dollar would crave positive coverage. But the big answer for the Big Easy does not lie in becoming a gumbo-flavored Disneyland where service- economy dollars are directed to minimum-wage jobs. The city needs a massive federal works project that puts the people of New Orleans to work rebuilding their own city. New Orleans is crying out for grand acts of daring and leadership. Nothing grand is coming from Washington, DC, and it is cruel to promote the belief that the drowned city will experience rebirth in a football stadium. The answer begins not with "scrubbing away memories of the Superdome" but in amplifying those memories so they fuel a movement to bring back not only the city but every last resident who wants to return. It ain't the Saints who need to go marching in. It's the rest of us. [Dave Zirin is the author of "'What's My Name Fool?': Sports and Resistance in the United States" (Haymarket Books) You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact him at [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** ELMO WILL NOT ABSOLVE YOU By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Just returned from a run around the National Mall. Party tents are going up. Getting ready for the National Book Festival on Saturday. Hosted by the Library of Congress. Sponsored by Target and AT&T. And starring Laura Bush. You will be seeing a lot of Laura Bush in the next couple of days. Talking with authors. Reading. Hanging out with kids. It's just a nice cover for the killing. We wanted to know more about the National Book Festival. So, we went to the Library of Congress web site. And we registered in the press area. And we got a call back from -- Susie Schoenberger. She's not with the Library of Congress. She's with the public relations firm -- Fleishman Hillard. Since when is the Library of Congress outsourcing press duties? Anyway, we want to know -- whose paying for this? How much is Target putting up? How much is AT&T? Can't answer that, Schoenberger says. You'll have to speak with Sheryl Cannady. She's with the Library of Congress. So, we call Cannady. And she sends us an e-mail saying that the one-day National Book Festival costs $1.5 million. But we can't tell you who pays for it. Great. In any event, you get the message. The web site is the Library of Congress. But the book festival itself is a corporate/Laura Bush affair. And no doubt the 70 authors who will appear at the book festival are wonderful people -- people like Kai Bird, Douglas Brinkley and Andrew Carroll -- and on the whole a book festival is a much better deal for the country than a military festival. But we also have little doubt that the corporate funding -- and Laura Bush's presence -- helped define the types of authors who appear at the Festival. Please don't tell us that it's just about getting kids to read. The question is not only reading -- but reading what? So, this year there has been a slew of books written about the war in Iraq and corporate power and the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us against. But the authors of these books will not appear at the National Book Festival on the Mall sponsored by Target and AT&T -- and hosted by Mrs. Laura Bush. Will Cindy Sheehan appear to read from her new book -- Peace Mom? No. Will Elizabeth Holtzman appear to read from her new book -- The Impeachment of George W. Bush? No. Will Thom Hartmann appear to read from Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class? No. Will Diane Wilson appear to read from her new book -- An Unreasonable Woman? No. (She'd probably be unreasonable enough to confront our First Lady of Bloodshed.) Will Edwin Black appear to read from his new book -- Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed The Alternatives? No. Will Dr. Helen Caldicott appear to read from her new book -- Nuclear Power is Not the Answer? No. Will Noam Chomsky appear to read from his bestseller -- Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination? No. Will Amy and David Goodman appear to read from their new book -- Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back? No. Will Jeff Goodell appear to read from his new book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future? No. Will David Callahan appear to read from The Moral Center: How We Can Reclaim Our Country from Die-Hard Extremists, Rogue Corporations, Hollywood Hacks and Pretend Patriots? No. Will Gore Vidal appear to read from Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia? No. Will Stephen Kinzer appear to read from his most recent book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, or from his previous classic -- All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror? No. Will David Cortright appear to read from his masterful Gandhi And Beyond: Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism? No. You get the idea. The National Book Festival is a public/private partnership -- read -- corporate controlled. And therefore, none of these authors will appear. Laura Bush will appear with kids and NBA players and community relations representatives from Target. She'll spend time with the Kevin Clash, an African-American man who is the voice of Elmo, and who has written a book titled My Life As a Furry Red Monster. Meanwhile, open today's Washington Post and go to pages A16 to A19. See the faces of the fallen. 2,693 Americans dead in Iraq. So far. Hanging out with Elmo will not absolve you, Mrs. Laura Bush. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org>. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman This article is posted at: <http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2006/000254.html> *** Carolyn Hester & Ross Altman in concert: Sat Sept 30 8:00 PM Café Danssa, 11533 W. Pico Blvd., WLA Tickets $12 for reservations you can call 310-478-7866 Carolyn Hester Carolyn Hester is an original < one of the small but determined gang of ragtag, early 1960s folk singers who cruised the coffee shops and campuses from Harvard Yard to Bleeker Street, convinced that their music could help change the world. The political and musical offspring of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and the Weavers, performers such as Hester, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, and Richard Fariña (to name a few) were among the vanguard of the new music of the 1960s, the first surging energy of a wave that would eventually engulf a generation of American youth. To this day, Hester remains a dynamic force with a repertoire of Southwestern-flavored originals and long-standing favorites. In addition to her own recordings, she has lent her vocals to Nancy Griffith¹s award-winning CD Other Voices/Other Rooms and has performed at various folk festivals across the country and overseas. Ross Altman A self-described ³singer-songfighter,² Ross Altman keeps up with the times with topical songs that reflect the great traditions of the genre popularized by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton. Altman has been a regular at the Adams Avenue Roots Festival as well as other Southern Californian folk venues for years. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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