Jefferson Journal
SOMETHING ABOUT MISSISSIPPI
Written by Duane Bradford. Last updated Thursday August 12th, 2010
By DUANE BRADFORD
Back when gas was 30 cents a gallon, we six would pack all of our luggage and cram it and ourselves into our car for our annual summer vacation trip from Florida to visit Mom El and Papa Utch and all of our French kin in the sugarcane country of southwest Louisiana. One time we forgot the luggage.
To break the tedium and tension of the 550-mile drive - no interstate highways in the early years, you know - many activities were conducted.
 BRADFORD |
But one of the things we absolutely, unfailingly, irrevocably did not do - did not ever do - was refill our gas tank while in Mississippi. We would make sure we had a tankful of gas in Mobile, Alabama, then scoot west across that 85-mile strip of Mississippi gulf coast and into the safe harbor of New Orleans. Why did we do that? At the time, I attributed this to a belief that Mississippi’s gas tax was way too much; the Magnolia State’s politicians were just out to whipsaw tourists.
But today, I believe that desire to flee across the state without even stopping for a pee break, probably cruel and unusual punishment for the smaller bladders, was caused by something even worse. Is it just because Mississippi is Mississippi?
WAS IT THE GREAT LODESTONE?
I work part-time as a disaster assistance employee for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. When Katrina struck the Mississippi area, I watched a report by CBS news correspondent Byron Pitts standing amidst storm rubble in a tiny unincorporated village of Pearlington, Mississippi. Pearlington is but a long rifle shot from Louisiana. The mouth of the Pearl River and the Gulf of Mexico are right at Pearlington’s front porch. Then-CBS Evening News Anchor Bob Schieffer had just introduced Pitts and was setting the tone of the message by telling viewers that, while the President had just said he wasn’t satisfied with the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, many people in the poverty-stricken community “have simply given up on waiting for that federal response.”
Correspondent Pitts picked up that thread, telling a heart-tugging story of how something of a “general store” had been set up in a gymnasium where storm victims could come to find things they needed, wash their clothes, shower and talk. “And to a person,” Pitts said, “nearly everyone feels abandoned by the federal government, so they rely on each other and the kindness of strangers.” They were taking care of themselves, and when Pitts ended his story, the reason would be clear if the viewer missed the first reference. It was six months after wind and wave had roared into the small area, and, he said, “many here have simply given up on waiting for that federal response.”
Dramatic. But false.
The message gave the impression that the people there had been abandoned. They had not. In fact, the family of the man Pitts was interviewing had received lodging and maximum help. And more than a thousand families living within a two-mile area of Pearlington had up to then received $2.8 million in federal assistance. Was this the Mississippi syndrome or just the kind of reporting calculated to get some national face time?
I lean toward the latter, but yet - and yet - this happened, alas, in Mississippi. I wondered: is there a lodestone there that compels the truth to be stretched? For events simply to go whacko without reason? (I was the Tampa Tribune reporter who advanced the theory that the inability of the pressroom guys to get a color picture into correct alignment was because the building was sitting atop a giant lodestone. I was wrong. The newspaper moved to a new building and still had the problem.)
ECONOMICAL WITH THE TRUTH
In another area of Mississippi, the same journalistic anomaly happened. A reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger had in mind writing an expose about the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He got the impression from talking to a new car dealer in Jackson that FEMA had made a bad financial deal by renting cars for its hundreds of field workers instead of, uh, buying them from a new car dealer somewhere.
A ream of documentary evidence provided by the federal General Services Agency clearly showed the economic wisdom of leasing the vehicles instead of incurring high maintenance problems connected with their outright purchase. But, as everyone concluded after six months into the Katrina response, FEMA was incompetent. So the reporter found it easy to sell such a story; easier to delete a particular reference to information he was provided that showed he was hopelessly wrong and that the agency had clearly made the fiscally responsible choice.
Sensing the direction of the story and the likelihood of a follow-up editorial that would compound the reporter’s journalistic felony, I dispatched the exculpatory information to the editor of editorial pages of the newspaper, telling him it had been plucked from the middle of a statement to the reporter and urging its inclusion in any editorial that might be considered. Two days later, an editorial was published. There was no mention of the information that was provided that showed the agency free of blame.
I begin to strengthen my lodestone theory. And I now mull the possibility of something terrible in the Mississippi aquifer. Maybe something seeping into it through the thousands of the holes being punched into the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Should I drink only bottled water?
FEMA vs. FAITH
“I don’t want to carry this too far because it can be dangerous territory,” said the Fox News interviewer to the Mississippi congressman, and then she carried it anyhow. “But it sounds as if the federal government could possibly not want to have faith involved at all in recovery missions.” - Fox TV, May 19, 2010.
Here we are, about five years after Katrina, and the lodestone - or bad water? - is having a cutting impact on FEMA by a television station in Jackson owned by Media General. And, woe unto FEMA, it happened during a TV ratings period of WJTV, Channel 12, a CBS affiliate. Rating sweeps, you know, help establish the amount of money a broadcaster might charge for anyone who wants to buy television commercial time. This sweep was fixated on the story line of the federal government versus religion. In Mississippi. Heavy, huh?
The yarn took legs as a result of bumbling action by a FEMA videographer, assigned to show citizen volunteers helping during a tornado recovery effort. The idea: boost the concept of citizen volunteerism. But this videographer was short on smarts. He found a group of people working. They were wearing T-shirts showing logos of the Salvation Army and WJTV Channel 12. (Part of the TV station’s sweep strategy was the sponsorship of its “Caring For Mississippi” cleanup day. So it created T-shirts with its logo for viewers to see who was doing these good works.)
This videographer, however, was looking for just “ordinary citizens” out helping others. So he clumsily told the group that. He asked them if they would be interested in being photographed doing their work - provided they would change T-shirts or put duct tape over the logos. Sure. They were a little put off by the suggestion that they were not just ordinary citizens. They didn’t object to being videographed. But their bosses did when they found out. And so did the TV station whose logo would be obliterated right smack in the middle of a ratings sweep. But wait. But wait. This could become a real coup for the rating sweep!
Therewith followed a television frenzy. “Christian Help Not Wanted?” went one line on Channel 12 screens. Then the Fox News lady’s stretch. Hmmm. Religious persecution? In Mississippi? Where there are probably more churches than fireplugs? That, at least, was the message clearly transmitted to Mississippians by that and other caustic tag lines on the television screens of many breathless follow-ups. As naturally as moths find candles, Congressman Gregg Harper was also distressed and, as fate would befall him, in the middle of an election year. So he announced his own concern as well as an investigation on the Fox News morning segment where the FEMA vs. FAITH line was displayed at the bottom of millions of TVs nationwide during the interview. Harper was a member of the Baptist church attended by two of the belatedly upset volunteers.
With the end of the Channel 12 ratings sweep, profuse apologies by FEMA’s leaders and assurances that FEMA was not against faith, a transfer of the videographer, belated support from the Salvation Army about its longstanding friendship with FEMA and a decided disinterest by the Mississippi print media, the yarn succumbed of terminal yawn. The main thing it did was consume a lot of valuable time that could have been used in prosecuting a speedier recovery effort for tornado disaster victims. Well, truth be, it may also have bumped up some TV rating numbers.
HOTEL NUMBERS
In my Mississippi diary, here we are in Mississippi again - this time wondering if hotel employees are suffering from adverse effects of The Great Lodestone. At least those who run the Hampton Inn at Clinton, Mississippi, where I stayed for most of the 30 days I worked in the area.
When I finally checked out and headed for home, I was unaware that the zero balance shown on my checkout bill was not zero at all. I was gone, and my old room was empty. But for some reason, without my knowledge, the hotel kept charging me. Yes, I know this is Mississippi, and strange things happen here. But a phantom hotel bill? Without my knowledge? Not until JPMorgan Chase, the credit card people who handle FEMA’s government credit card, sent me a notice that I still owed them $793.00 did I learn of this thing. After a few hours of combing through copies of travel expense vouchers and chatting with FEMA finance people, I finally identified the likely culprit and pushed the hotel into returning its ill-gotten gains to JPMorgan Chase. Hampton says it has now done that.
But the story does not yet end.
There is no adequate way to describe all that is entailed in untangling a government credit card problem. Especially a system in which the government agency pays the credit card company directly without the cardholder seeing what is paid and what is not. If the problem is related to a hotel asking JPMorgan Chase to pay them for services it falsely billed, well, read old man J.P. Morgan’s biography to gain a hint of how he became a zillionaire before he died in 1913. JP made it clear to me recently, however. It said I should pony up $793.00 or face loss of charging privileges - and, by the way, your bosses have been told you are a financial deadbeat.
The plot is still thickening on this story as I write. JPMorgan now sounds as though it understands my message and vows relief. Hilton is a little sluggish. It is an exciting project for a retiree. Mississippi: is it The Great Lodestone or me? I am beginning to wonder.
OH. SOMETHING ELSE ABOUT MISSISSIPPI
Right on the heals of being stiffed by the Clinton, Mississippi, Hampton Inn and then browbeaten by JPMorgan Chase for the accounting sins of another, I am introduced to an entirely new scam that has greeted me in this eighth decade of my life: Mississippi debit card thieves.
Several times during my stay near Jackson, Mississippi in this spring of 2010, I slipped my personal bank debit card through the money machine to buy different things. On July 29th, I discovered in a chance online glance of my bank account that someone else there had swiped the card through a device that recorded my credit card numbers. On two successive days, nearly two months after I had left Mississippi, my bank posted debits of a little more than a thousand bucks to my ravaged account -- $579.00 alone from a place named Fred’s and $305.00 from Walgreens in Jackson. After a day of completing forms and an affidavit, and getting a police investigation opened, the bank replaced the money in the account - provisionally, of course, pending confirmation of the theft.
Yes, to be sure. There is something about Mississippi -- as famed Mississippi author Eudora Welty portrayed in writing “Why I live at the P.O.” One possibility: common dysfunction.