Don't Worry; New Orleans is Safe

Mack Hall

This is my audition script for a job with National Public Radio:

After weeks of brewing at sea, mighty Hurricane Ike, bearing Mother Nature’s wrath and reflecting the global warming caused by greedy Americans driving cars and working at jobs, thundered ashore on a dark and stormy night, making landfall while wreaking havoc on women and minorities because of an evil CIA plot. Snapping trees like matchsticks, and matchsticks like trees, because people are always snapping matchsticks and saying “See, that sounds just like a pine tree!”, the hurricane, an iconic symbol of America’s loss of innocence, a storm that defined a generation, left devastation in its wake in places we in Washington never heard of and don’t care about, thankfully sparing our most European city and center of culture, New Orleans (cue the saxophones).

Evil, wicked oil companies cruelly pre-left oil production facilities in the path of Hurricane Ike in their pre-abysmal pre-failure to pre-plan the pre-needs of, like, y’know, harp seals ‘n’ stuff. A select congressional delegation will fly to Las Vegas in taxpayer-funded jets for a week-long investigation into corruption by Big Oil, and to participate in budgeting workshops to consider raising taxes in order to give more money to New Orleans, which was so ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Leave no child behind. Unless you’re Mayor Nagin (cue the sloshing water).

Images of devastation in Galveston, Texas can only suggest to imaginative people a little of what Hurricane Katrina must have been like in New Orleans when President Bush’s levees failed (cue the harmonicas).

Learning that every building in Bridge City, Texas, was flooded by the storm surge, with many of them completely destroyed and with whole families’ livelihoods destroyed, makes one want to take up a collection for the suffering of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina (cue the zydeco).

Hearing that Bolivar Peninsula is no longer a peninsula but three islands and that the loss of life there is not yet determined makes one feel sorry for those in New Orleans who suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome from Hurricane Katrina (cue loud sniffles).

Pictures of the flooded homes in Beaumont and Orange, sleepy little towns in Texas, make one weep for the tragedies in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina (cue more loud sniffles).

Considering that the homes, businesses, and families of Winnie, High Island, Rollover Pass, Crystal Beach, and other quaint little places occupied by the sort of people who cling to guns and religion will never be the same, with some people having lost everything they ever worked for, leads this reporter to take the front in leading a national day of our-thoughts-and-hearts-go-out-to-you for the people of New Orleans who lost so much more during Hurricane Katrina (cue some vaguely church-like sounds).