Letter to CBS Evening News

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.

 

 

 

 

 

"Freedomisknowledge"