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September 18, 2005

The Night the Lights Went On (and Off Again) in New Orleans

I originally wrote this entry yesterday, but for some reason it wouldn't publish.....

Brian Williams' blog entry about the most recent Bush photo-op has been making the rounds in Blogworld. Most bloggers have been citing the first half of Williams' entry, in which he discusses the fact that just half an hour after Bush's speech, the electric lights that provided the President with an inspiring backdrop were shut down again:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it...jump to certain conclusions.
It's not difficult to jump to the conclusions implied by Williams, especially given the Bush administration's skill in staging dramatic visuals for Presidential speeches. However, even with dozens of media-savvy bloggers ready to Deconstruct Dubya, the stunning visuals, straight out of a high-concept film, still retain tremendous power. In fact, if someone isn't working on a sequel to Michael Rogin's Ronald Reagan The Movie And Other Episodes in Political Demonology, then maybe it's time to start writing that book.

But while it's important to unpack the Bush administration's often unsubtle use of images, I found Williams' discussion of what happens when the lights go dark (and most of the cameras leave) to be more troubling:

It is impossible to over-emphasize the extent to which this area is under government occupation, and portions of it under government-enforced lockdown. Police cars
rule the streets. They (along with Humvees, ambulances, fire apparatus, FEMA trucks and all official-looking SUVs) are generally not stopped at checkpoints and roadblocks. All other vehicles are subject to long lines and snap judgments and must PROVE they have vital business inside the vast roped-off regions here. If we did not have the services of an off-duty law enforcement officer, we could not do our jobs in the course of a work day and get back in time to put together the broadcast and get on the air. As we are about to do.
The description of a city "under government occupation" and "government-enforced lockdown" suggests a slightly more coercive attempt to manage the crisis. While I was originally pretty skeptical about Williams' blog, I have to admit that his last few entries have provided some valuable eye-witness insight into the current situation in New Orleans and the potential long-term
ramifications of Katrina's impact on the region.

Posted by chuck at September 18, 2005 10:17 AM

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Comments

FWIW, I understand that Brian Massumi is writing a book about Bush, a follow-up to his and Kenneth Dean's First and Last Emperors, which was (in part) about Reagan.

Posted by: Jon at September 18, 2005 1:38 PM

Thanks for the tip, Jon. I'll look out for it. I'm ertainly a fan of Massumi's work on Deleuze. There's certainly a fair amount of work out there on the cinematization of the presidency (and the process has a history that dates back to the 1890s and William McKinley), but the cinematic aspects of Bush's presidency are certainly ripe for analysis.

Posted by: Chuck [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 18, 2005 2:13 PM

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