Monday, September 5: Self-Inflicted Harm

Monday, Day Eight of the flood, was Labor Day. President Bush’s mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, who lived in Houston, Texas, toured the Houston Astrodome, which had become a shelter for thousands of New Orleans residents who had evacuated a week earlier. The arena was filled with people sleeping in cots, separated from loved ones, who had lost their homes and possessions. Mrs. Bush gave a live interview from the stadium with the NPR radio program Marketplace. She said, “And so many of the people in the arena here were, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”³¹ The audio went viral on television news. The dynamic changed again, back to questions about racial motivations in the response.