Michael Marsh Anchor, 5, 6 & 10 p.m.
WBRZ
mmarsh@wbrz.comDear Michael:
Last week while the rest of the country was wondering how the refugees from the Katrina flood were doing,
Lee Rodgers of San Francisco radio station KSFO called them
sniveling whiners and freeloaders and told them to shut the hell up and "
Get off your butt and go to work." (audio link)
Rodgers: This two year pity party has gone on long enough and then some. Rodgers: But two years later for god's sake people, solve your own bleeping problems, we're sick of hearing about you. And eh, and if you are sick and tired of the whining of the people in or from New Orleans about the government not doing enough for them and doing the rebuilding job for them. Maybe those people down there ought to stop their sniveling and whining and watch an example of self reliance right there in their own community. ( audio link)
Rodgers: I don't wanna hear anymore of this crap from people in Louisiana saying "Gimmee, Gimmee, Gimmee.
Shut the hell up.
Solve your own problems. It's been two years, grow up. (
audio link)
Melanie Morgan, the co-host, called New Orleans "a rathole " (excluding the French Quarter). Lee Rodgers call New Orleans a sewer.
Rodgers asks, "Is one hurricane supposed to be a permanent life long ticket on a bleeping gravy train? Come on!" (audio link)
Rodgers suggests that the displaced people, "Get the hell over it!"
Morgan also alleged that, "...kids in the schools became the worst bullies and offenders and disrupted many of the fine Houston schools." I'm not really sure what evidence she has, but I doubt she has facts to back up her claims.
If you want any more information, see the complete transcripts and longer audio links below. Note: KSFO, 560 AM is an ABC Radio station and is owned by Citadel Broadcasting.
LLAP,
Spocko
P.S. Michael, I see you spent some time at KPIX in SF, they did a story about some of the other horrible things KSFO hosts say and the lengths they went to to shut up their critics.
cc Tony Jones
Whitney Vann
Complete KSFO Audio Links and Transcripts
I've provided links to the audio clips below for your convenience. I've also transcribed their comments. To verify that what I'm including is not out of context or manipulated in any way, I suggest that you listen to the audio podcasts that KSFO puts up on their own website. I've listed when the audio clips starts in real time as well as when the audio clips start on the KSFO podcast (The KSFO podcast doesn't include the first ABC Radio news broadcast).
NOTE:Melanie Morgan's 501 c. 3 group, Move America Forward, is embarking on a nationwide tour this week "fighting back against the anti-war left" and her concern that money is going down a "rathole" of New Orleans is rather ironic considering that she supports the money going into the war in Iraq and into a country that is NOT populated by US citizens.
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What do ABC Radio host Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan think of "those people" in New Orleans and people who had to leave during the two year anniversary of this massive tragedy? These are transcripts and audio from 8/29/2007 and 8/30/2007.
Rodgers: Save New Orleans? For what? The French Quarter..
Morgan: For another hurricane.
Rodgers: Now they got the French Quarter up and running again. Okay fine. It's a theme park, but that's what it's been for years anyway.
The rest of it's a sewer.
Morgan: Well the French Quarter wasn't even that badly hit. I mean..
Rodgers: No because it's on higher ground.
Morgan: Exactly so there wasn't much of a problem there to begin with. But they are trying to fix the unfixable in the rest of the city and in the mean time every politician in the country is pandering, spending billions of dollars and putting it in what? A rathole.
Rodgers: These transplanted New Orleans. [in whining voice] "Oh it's my home I gotta go back" No you don't. People have moved all over the world through out human history. You can do it too. Get off your butt and go to work.
Morgan:[laughing]
From KSFO on 8/29/07, broadcast time 7:44 am: (Audio link, MP3, 49 seconds )
( Longer audio link, MP3 1:50 seconds)
Rodgers and Morgan 8/29/07 05:15 am ( Link MP3 9 minutes )
http://www.ksfo560.com//sectional.asp?id=17750
Rodgers: "Did you know that parts of New Orleans where some these silly people are trying to rebuild houses are 14 feet below sea level and sinking by another inch every year ? And nothing has been done really that would prevent another Katrina. Nothing. Now where in god's name is the logic about trying to rebuild a city in a location like that?"
{Snip. he blames the French and says keep the French Quarter as a Theme park'}
"I for one, I'm all in favor of helping needy people, but at what point do you say, 'Hey it's time that you people got off your asses went to work and earned your own way"? Two years later, Dallas Morning New, some of the refugees from New Orleans were settled in Dallas and the community had an outpouring of generosity and they were giving them all kinds of freebies housing, so on and do forth.
Morgan: Yeah
Rodger: Two years later, the people have been freeloading for two years are whining because the gravy train is slowing down. ( Link)
Morgan: Oh. No! That's terrible.
Rodger: It says, I'm looking here at the Dallas Morning News, say "Hurricane Katrina relief, once an outpouring of support for evacuees displaced in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has slowed to a trickle on the second anniversary of the storm official figures are available, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 evacuee households, [people from New Orleans and vicinity-this fragment was inserted by Rodgers and is not in the linked story text] still call North Texas home, [according to advocacy groups- he left out this phrase]. And countless evacuees still need help paying for basic necessities such as rent and utilities."
Ah at what point after a disaster and personal hardship are people expected to start taking care of themselves again? Is one hurricane supposed to be a permanent life long ticket on a bleeping gravy train? Come on! (link)
[Morgan then proceeds to tell about during her experience the Ruskin Heights Tornado in 1957 her family recovered and not one of us received a dime from FEMA or any other Federal agency (Note FEMA wasn't created until 1979 by Jimmy Carter) She of course doesn't count the National Guard that came in to help as a Federal Agency. Of course the Menorah Hospital , doesn't count either even though they cared for her (they reattached her toes) and her bother and mother.]
Morgan: People took care of each other and this kind of sentiment you don't hear expressed about the Katrina victims, what you do hear about are those people is those people who were transported to Dallas and brought with them all kinds of crime and just awful, awful behavior.
Rodgers: And Houston even worse
Morgan: In fact many of those kids in the schools became the worst bullies and offenders and disrupted many of the fine Houston schools.
Rodger: Well they brought the habits of the New Orleans public schools with them and those were widely and reliably reputed to be some of the worst schools in the country.
The President is going to be down there today and there's going to be endless babbling by him and other politicians, about "Oh we gotta rebuild New Orleans" Where is it written that we have to rebuild New Orleans so the whole damn thing can happen all over again?
Morgan: (crosstalk)
Rodgers: That's just plain simple minded stupidity
Morgan: I agree
Rodgers: And of course now it's come out. Big surprise, Louisiana er um which is a moral sewer in terms of political responsibility, one of the most corrupt states and New Orleans is one of the most corrupt cities in the country and big surprise yesterday or day before it was in the news that millions perhaps billions of dollars of aid that's gone down there has never reached the intended....
Morgan: Victims
Rodgers: recipients, the victims of Hurricane Katrina. No. No. No. Some how it got siphoned off by crooked contractors and crooked politicians you know the kind who go around bribe money in home freezers and stuff like that.
Get the hell over it! Rebuild New Orleans? Why? Why? Alright, it was a lovely charming old city it's gone and I don't care how much money they stuff into the pockets of crooked contractors down there, it ain't ever coming back. Never. Never. Never. 14 feet below sea level! For god's sakes think about that for a moment. ( Audio Link)
Another Katrina. It's isn't if, it's just when. And then you do it all over again. That's why I resent the government subsidizing flood plan insurance. People get flooded out, the government gives them a check to go back and build another house in the exact location to get flooded out again. The next time the Mississippi or the Missouri river is up or a Hurricane comes ashore what are we doing? This is insanity! Thank you.
Morgan: You are welcome very much, and truer words were never spoken.
Rodgers and Morgan 8/29/07 05:15 am ( Link MP3 9 minutes )
http://www.ksfo560.com//sectional.asp?id=17750
FROM 8/30/07 6:40 AM
Rodgers: Yesterday we have the orgy of media coverage of course that's spilling over into today about the second anniversary of Katrina. The elected leaders of in Louisiana and New Orleans and let's never forget they were elected.
Morgan: Mm hmm.
Rodgers: The people down their picked them, the elected leaders two years after hurricane Katrina. Still they can't seem to do much of anything beyond whine and beg. "Somebody come fix our problem." ABC's Steve Ocinsamie is down there in New Orleans as part of the coverage of the anniversary and talks about what NOLA, New Orleans Louisiana is like today today.
AUDIO from ABC News "Two years after Katrina and much of this city still looks like it did the day the city was flooded. While many people have come back it just doesn't have the life that New Orleans have that we all remember. It seems that people are more distrustful of government people don't trust anything that they hear. There is very little faith in the levees, which supposedly have been mostly rebuilt but only to category 3 protection. That doesn't sit well with many residences.
Rodgers:: Then do this people, Get OUT!
Morgan: Yeah.
Rodgers: Move somewhere else. Hundreds of millions, billions of human beings before you have done exactly that. Conditions aren't good here, let's go somewhere else, why do you think you have to live in a bleeping swamp?
This two year pity party has gone on long enough and then some. And this may also help explain why so many people who left New Orleans after the hurricane have decided, no they are not coming back. Now the population of the city of New Orleans is only about two third what it was before hurricane Katrina, but boy one group that is back in force, the crime element.
The criminals, mostly drug dealers have certainly come back and taken up residence. One hundred and 60 people have died in street killings in the last year, many of them residences killed by thugs looking for money. This past weekend in New Orleans east a Vietnamese couple was gunned down in their home in front of their kids.
What a contrast between the endless whining and begging by the crooks who run Louisiana compared to the post Katrina rebuilding next door in the state of Mississippi. There is still more to be done there, but a whole lot of progress is being made along Mississippi's gulf coast two years after the Hurricane. ABC Robin Roberts reports from Pass Christian Mississippi
Eleven of Mississippi's thirteen casinos big employers are back. Employing 18,000 people. That's a thousand more than before Katrina. Almost every school is back, enrollment at 94 percent of what it was before the storm.
So long story short, while Louisiana keeps begging the federal government to come in and fix everything for them, Mississippians simply got to work and did it.
Morgan: Begging and blaming. That's their favorite pastime. To blame the Federal government for everything that went wrong in Louisiana and that it's all their fault that Katrina victims don't have any money, and God after two whole years, their benefits are running out.
Rodgers: At some point, at some point you gotta say, you people are gonna have to stand on your own two feet. Of course FEMA made a total bleeping botch of their what should have been immediate response to the hurricane it's like, it's not like they didn't know the hurricane was coming. So they screwed that up. But two years later for god's sake people, solve your own bleeping problems, we're sick of hearing about you. And eh, and if you are sick and tired of the whining of the people in or from New Orleans about the government not doing enough for them and doing the rebuilding job for them. Maybe those people down there ought to stop their sniveling and whining and watch and example of self reliance right there in their own community. ( Audio Link)
Now the only really surprising thing about this story is that USA Today ran it, they run a story with out the focus of beating up on the Bush administration, http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070829/1a_coverside29_dom.art.htm
"While much of the rest of New Orleans is still the same disaster area it was the day after the hurricane two years ago. One neighborhood has rebuilt itself. It's the neighborhood of Versailles a few miles east of downtown New Orleans where the houses have been rebuilt and repainted, nearly all 7,000 residents of that neighborhood has returned. And you might ask what's different about that neighborhood. Here's what's different, it's made up of Vietnamese refugees who came to this country after the Vietnam war, they knew about untenable circumstances, they did something about it. They moved. And they, most of these people come from the Mekong river delta in Vietnam which is the rice growing area, why because it's lowlands and the Mekong river floods regularly so they know something about that. And they didn't wait for the government to come in and solve their problems for them. They just went to work fixing things. One of the early returning residences in the neighborhood a woman named Linda Tran, she is 55 she and her husband and their son slept on air mattresses while her family and other neighbors worked together to rebuild each other's house fix them up repaint them. She owns a restaurant in the neighborhood and she used money from her insurance to rebuild and she says, "I didn't want any money from the government. We needed our home. We worked all our lives for it," so she like her neighbors when to work and they did it themselves. And instead of Bush going down there and engaging in another hugathon and making more promises about how much more money we are going to pour in to that area. He should have said, "Hey people look at your neighbors the Vietnamese, see what they did and stop bitching and moaning, 'Oh the government is supposed to ffff fix things!' Here's a little footnote by the way, President Bush and the congress have committed over 127 billion dollars to relief for New Orleans and the immediate gulf cost region around there. Now to give you some perspective, adjust for inflation, so it's an apples to apples comparison. Dollars for dollar, 127 billion dollars is more than the 107.6 billion dollars we spent rebuilding 16 countries in Europe after World War II.
Morgan: Wow.
Rodgers: I don't wanna hear anymore of this crap from people in Louisiana saying "Gimmee, Gimmee, Gimmee. Shut the hell up. Solve your own problems. It's been two years, grow up.
It's 13 minutes before seven o'clock. Hot talk. 560 KSFO.
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Rathole
Gravy TrainRathole SewerFreeloading whinersPermanent gravy trainGet over itSniveling WhiningShut the hell up
Sniveling WhiningNOTE: If you want to send this to other media, use the brilliant Spotlight project!
http://www.thespotlightproject.org/
Just plug in the permalink from Spocko's Brain and pick a few TV, Radio and Print journalists in the states/cities that are mentioned.
Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Phoenix, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arizona and California
Labels: ABC, audio clips, Citadel Broadcasting, defend new orleans, El Gato Negro, flood control, flooding, HumidCity, Katrina, KSFO, Lee Rodgers, Move America Forward, race in politics, spocko
I'd like to see your source on that 3000+ dead pets, the most I've seen on "reputable" websites is ~250, that's a whole order of magnitude off from your numbers. I think the companies should come clean, but I also don't think anyone should be inflating numbers just to get a response.