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Terror on the Tarmac
October 15, 2005
Why is it so hard to give up newsing? Yesterday's Washington Post e-mail digest (which I started getting this past summer when I went to the Post's website to vote for the Capitol Steps in an arts & entertainment opinion poll -- I think I felt guilty for stuffing the ballot box from outside the D.C. area) contained an utter gem:
Katrina Food Aid Blocked by U.S. Rules
Meals From Britain Sit in Warehouse
The story, by Ceci Connolly, begins thus:
"In the early days of September, as military helicopters plucked desperate New Orleanians from rooftops and Red Cross shelters swelled with the displaced, nearly 400,000 packaged meals landed on a tarmac at Little Rock Air Force Base and were whisked by tractor-trailer to Louisiana.
"But most of the $5.3 million worth of food never reached the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Instead, because of fears about mad cow disease and a long-standing ban on British beef, the rations routinely consumed by British soldiers have sat stacked in a warehouse in Arkansas for more than a month."
The State Department is "quickly and quietly looking for a needy country to take them," the story continues. I had to stop reading; I was hooting so loudly I distracted myself. By coincidence I've been listening to the Capitol Steps CD One Bush, Two Bush, Old Bush, New Bush in my truck the last couple of days. It covers the presidential election and other shenanigans of 2000, but it wears admirably, or maybe depressingly, well. One number, "The Impossible Scheme,"is introduced by the observation that the 19 (as of 2000) years of the Capitol Steps have coincided with "the nineteen most scandal-plagued years of U.S. history" and some speculation about why. ("Who leaked those scandals?") Hell, who needs scandals when real life keeps churning out stories like "Meals from Britain Sit in Warehouse"?
While working on "My Terrorist Eye" during the first months of this year, I thought a lot about how well USians have been primed -- well, let's be honest here: have primed ourselves -- for the hysteria of the "war on terror." (In a recent column Molly Ivins referred to it as the "war on terra." That's another reason I can't completely give up AlterNet. Why didn't I think of that?) We're like little kids in the Halloween haunted house, or big kids watching Psycho for the umpteenth time: we scare ourselves with germs, computer viruses, the 7 Warning Signs of Cancer, and a truly astonishing array of other ailments and the symptoms thereof, and when those get old we wallow in apocalyptic visions of what will happen if Bush gets re-elected or the Supreme Court declares gay marriage constitutional.
Well, deep down, I like to believe that this is an act we put on for our neighbors and whoever else is watching. We aren't really that flaky: when people run around ("when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout") demanding or enacting a ban on British beef because of mad cow disease, I figure that sooner or later they'll realize the sky isn't falling -- it's not the British population, is it, that's running around frothing at the mouth? -- and come to their senses. Nearly 400,000 packaged meals sitting in a Louisiana warehouse say I'm way too optimistic. Like the Capitol Steps sing, to the tune of "The Impossible Dream": "You will learn through our song / Your belief that they aren't all inept is totally wrong."
Except this isn't about "they," it's about "us." C'mon guys, I've got a lot riding on this: Isn't there someone in the U.S. gummint who'll cop to this out-of-season April Fool prank and direct this largesse toward the people who could use it? Failing that, maybe someone in the State Department will point out that if these meals are really unsafe for U.S. citizens, we have no business exporting them to other countries.
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