Lolis Elie over at the Times Picayune puts it forth in a straightforward fashion. The same thing that so many of us have seen as the rubble filled months wear on, short attention span theater. Here is a pertinent snip from his column:
Persistence is critical to survival
It seemed like a big story. It was, for a day.
The Army Corps of Engineers Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force acknowledged that the flood control system that was supposed to protect our city was “a system in name only.”
The report on which that finding was based took eight months, cost $20 million and has profound implications for every section of this country that relies on an Army Corps of Engineers structure to protect it.
“We say this was a system failure in that the system designed to protect New Orleans failed on many levels, but it also shows how the system — the business model — we use to build these things is so flawed,” said Ed Link, the University of Maryland professor who headed the task force. “The way we determine need, assess risk and go about funding and approving these things is based on a model that might have been appropriate for the way we lived 50 years ago, but is sorely outdated today.”
Often, when such a major report is issued, it discussed and dissected for days afterward. But, as with so much of the news from New Orleans, this story died a premature death.
It is as arrant a piece of knavery as can be offered yet the antics of Paris Hilton get more play in the national news. The Fourth Estate has been, as expected, more concerned with selling commercial time than responsible reporting, par for the course.
Am I just letting it get to me? Probably. Its not shocking or amazing, at least to my jaded perspective on mass media. It is simply disappointing, disheartening, and depressing. JUst like my daily drive through destroyed neighborhoods as I go from construction gig to construction gig. Its hard to forget when you spend every day seeing decimation like this all around you:
