September 7, 2005
Dear CBS Evening News:
Your interim anchor as specified by your
Web site, Bob Schieffer, referred to the emergency management federal
organization on tonight's broadcast as "The Bungling FEMA."
Really? I thought FEMA was not allowed to
just walk into a state, but instead had to be invited into a disaster
area or didn't Schieffer know that? And I was not aware that the
commission on looking into FEMA's actions in the Katrina disaster
had already been chosen, had met, and had said to the media that
its findings were "the bumbling FEMA caused all this."
My understanding is the state of Louisiana's
Home Land Security is responsible for inviting FEMA into its state,
or would CBS like FEMA to just walk in and take over a state's business
without being asked?
Hello?
Was it not also Louisiana's Home Land Security
Office that wouldn't allow the Red Cross to go to
the Super Dome, the department not wanting the poor to think they
could stay there?
And what about the mayor of New Orleans,
a black yuppie who should have been the one most sensitive to poor
and disadvantaged. Yet he never, ever moved them out KNOWING full
well a Category 5 storm was on its way, his own directives from
FEMA last year saying it would take at least 72 hours to get the
sick and the poor out of the city. Thousands of school buses that
could have moved them to a safety now sit ruined in toxic water.
But once the
poor got to the Dome on their own, why didn't the mayor sit there
with them 24/7, asking his state's homeland security office why
the Red Cross was not allowed to come there?
We also understand that FEMA had people ready
to go, our understanding that those in the letter you talk about
on air were mainly additional volunteers, and before New Orleans
was EVER flooded . . . the city's own left-wing CBS-type newspaper
printing that the city had missed the bullet after Hurricane Katrina
had passed.
I think what would help is for the truth
to come from CBS that their host and editors should have gotten
their butts out of the New York, leaving their yuppie and meaningless
cocktail parties behind to head down to the Gulf Coast and broadcast
from there, interviewing people who were homeless right-on-the-spot.
Instead yuppie Schieffer continued to broadcast
from his comfortable chair dressed in his power tie and suit while
living in the protection of New York City.
Tell Bob Schieffer that I'm ashamed of him,
remembering that he and I came from the same 1950s when the news
was the news, and irresponsible opinions like the one he made today
would have never been allowed to make it on the air by people in
charge who knew the difference.
CBS Evening News needs to apologize to all
its viewers, that Schieffer really didn't have enough facts to call
FAMA's actions "bungling" at this time, admitting
that instead he was the one who had bungled it.
If not, we all then should put Schieffer
in the same Hall of Shame as "that other guy who's
there . . . what's his name that lied about documents on President
Bush?"
It's nice to realize that it's still the
Fox News Channel that cares about our freedom to know, their
not treating us like so many cattle to be herded around the CBS
ranch.