We pass a number of different houses that have been rebuilt in the architectural style they had before Katrina. There are also large areas of empty lots that sit vacant, some packed with garbage and debris covered in layers of uncut dead weeds and new grass. It looks like an archeological dig in reverse—the history of the people too recent, the fossils and potsherds in need of centuries of decomposition.
Other areas are spotless in their renewed perfection, the effort to erase the brutality of the storm outshining the ease with which the
bougainvilleas bloom on their tumultuous vines. However, there is no sense of closure to the refurbished Lower Ninth Ward. Almost like a tattoo that has only been partially removed, there is still evidence of the devastation in the demarcations visible on many of the houses that haven’t been restored.
We drive by house after house, and Jacques shows us how far the waterline had risen. He points out different houses where people had to be rescued from their roofs after using axes to break through the rafters and climb on top. Luckily, some people had kept axes in their attics because of lore about the levees flooding.
“If you saw it on the news,” he tells us, “this is where people waited sometimes for days to be rescued. Just sitting up there out in the hot sun, not knowing if they were going to die or not.”
For whatever reason, the image of my father’s prison, the “Hanoi Hilton” in Vietnam, springs to mind. I visited the Hanoi Hilton when I was in college and we went on a family trip to Vietnam. I feel now as I did then, glad to witness what is left of the physicality of a place that held such horrific experiences, yet also angry that history has let such things happen. Human beings and politics can be so grotesque and barbaric, but hope can always be found somewhere, disguised, in that complicated kaleidoscope.
We get out of Jacques’s car and walk around. In the midst of the old-style architecture of traditional wide-porched New Orleans houses are the startling eco-friendly “Brad Pitt houses,” built by Pitt and his Make It Right Foundation. Make It Right has pledged to rebuild the parish, and has completed fourteen houses, with nineteen currently under construction. They are slowly moving families one by one back into their homes, which are affordable and environmentally sound. They are also putting money into community centers and gardens, doing their best to reestablish the Lower Ninth Ward as a place where middle-income families can thrive.
All that said, the houses visually stick out like a sore thumb. No one needs to point them out, as they look like futuristic
2001: A Space Odyssey
cubes, or like something we may one day build on Mars. They’re not what I would call beautiful, nor do I completely
understand why the foundation chose to go so far away from the traditional feeling of the place. I respect and appreciate the intent of Brad Pitt, and the nobility of his mission, but they seem weirdly . . . arrogant, as though a panel of experts handed down a decree to the people of Whoville saying, “Trust us, you’ll
like
living on this dust speck.”
We stand in front of one particularly unfortunate-looking house, towering over its historic neighbor on stilts that seem to say,
Next time I’m going to make it, but you aren’t.
I try to see what the building will look like once the shrubs have grown and the trees come back, but honestly, it looks more like a jacked-up trailer than anything else.
I ask Jacques, “Would it have been really difficult to make environmentally friendly houses that also resembled the aesthetic that used to encompass the Ninth Ward?”
“Those eco-friendly homes are not without controversy,” he says softly.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt not trying to recreate the past exactly as it was, but shaped with more consciousness of the kind of future the Lower Ninth Ward
should
have, which still seems like it’s a complicated one.
We make our way over train tracks and empty lots where a makeshift deck has been built over the levee so that visitors can look out onto the barge of muddy water clotted with weeds, grass, tree branches, and assorted stumps.
“We built this because we never want people to forget and we want to show them where it happened,” Jacques says as a small bike tour led by a young man from the neighborhood passes. “He does that for free,” he explains. “He just wants to give people tours of the Lower Ninth—I mean, you could buy him lunch afterwards, but it doesn’t cost anything to go on the bike tour.”
“Hey, Jacques!” the young man yells. “Doing a tour, I see.”
“Beautiful day for it!” Jacques greets the man back. As we watch the tiny tour weave into the Lower Ninth, I feel hope coming off the area in fresh waves. The guide didn’t seem sad; he seemed
happy to be sharing his town with a handful of strangers, just as Glen, Willis, and Jacques have been with us. The pride all these natives feel is contagious, and even as the Brad Pitt houses loom over the neighborhood, it’s apparent that there are enough people in here and out there to bring the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to a better place, even if it’s taking too long to do so.
Little Rock, Arkansas
Lot Lizards
Meghan:
This will not be my first visit to Little Rock. I traveled there during my father’s campaign for an event and a fundraiser and I remember being, as terrible as this may sound, very bored. I’m hoping it was situational, given that I was traveling with my father’s campaign staff, who were essentially adult babysitters—there to make sure I didn’t get arrested or create some kind of media drama. The trip basically consisted of getting on and off a campaign plane, waiting outside a fundraiser talking to volunteers who had previously worked for Mike Huckabee (and seemed to prefer Mike Huckabee over my father), and watching
Sex and the City
reruns in my hotel room. Maybe this trip to Little Rock will prove a little more exciting.
Much to my relief, Michael, Stephie, and, dare I say, Cousin John and I seem to be getting into a rhythm with one another. The long RV rides and our constant meals together have slowly gone from feeling like the awkward first few weeks of school and started to evolve into the later free-wheeling weeks of summer camp. Before I left for this trip, I had dinner with friends and told them I hoped it was going to be exactly like camp, and I felt that Michael Ian Black would make a good camp counselor, or at least fellow camper. His hilarious work on the movie
Wet Hot American Summer
was clearly evidence to the yes side of the table, seeing as how it is set at a summer camp. The no side of the table depicted the two of us screaming at each other in the middle of the desert, with me hitchhiking my way home and calling the book off. Happily, we are nowhere near the desert.
I have very dear and close friends that I describe as “the inner circle.” It’s always been difficult for me to let new people in and it gets harder every year as I get older. So it’s surprising to me, as we spend more time on the road and have more meaningful conversations, as the sweltering southern countryside passes outside the window, that Michael has actually, and possibly unintentionally, wormed his little way in. He’s a terrific listener, and has even given me some great advice. I know I go all Rambo on him when we’re talking politics, but with each passing mile marker, we grow that much closer.
I even half-joke with Michael this morning when we leave for Little Rock, “You know, if you’re in, you’re in for life now, and my drama is now your drama, right?”
Michael looks at me and deadpans, “I love your drama. I know. I’m in.”
I can’t help but produce a huge Cheshire Cat grin. It’s a perfect answer, and pretty much at that point I let go of all my walls. I’m sure that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop fighting or debating our absolute world of differences and beliefs. It just means that the discussions are going to be more honest.
Michael:
If I have any excuse for wanting to go to Little Rock, it’s that there isn’t much else on the way to Branson. Also, this trip has been a Republican freak fest from moment one and I need to get a little Democrat love. What better Democrat lover than Bill Clinton, whose hometown also houses his presidential library? We figure we’ll make a daytrip to Little Rock, stop at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum, and then hit the fabulous Little Rock nightlife.
As we head up I-55 from Mayor Nagin’s “Chocolate City,” we do some research on what to do in The Rock. Yes, we know Little Rock nightlife is probably not going to compare to the goings-on in New Orleans, but we figure there has to be
something
to do. After researching the matter on Google, we determined that, in fact, no, there is nothing to do in Little Rock. The entire town disappears in a puff of smoke at five o’clock in the afternoon.
We then put the query out to our Twitter followers. Mostly we get the expected snarky comments, but a few people mention going to North Little Rock for strip clubs and danger. We’ve already done the strip club in Vegas, although “danger” holds some appeal. I’m not sure what kind of danger they’re talking about, but I assume it’s the kind of homogenous corporatized danger that occurs when heated words are exchanged at a Dave & Buster’s.
As crazy a gun culture as we have in America, I almost never feel like I am in any actual danger. That’s a good thing, but it seems at odds with the way the world views us. When I say “the world,” I am talking specifically about a couple of the au pairs who have come to live with my family over the past few years. These are mostly French girls in their early twenties. My wife, having lived for a year in Paris, is an unabashed Francophile and wanted our kids to learn French. They didn’t.
One of the reasons Martha was not worried about me going on this trip with Meghan was probably because she saw how I conducted myself around our series of barely legal French nannies. I always acted like a perfect gentleman. Because I am, in fact, a perfect gentleman. Anyway, all of these girls expressed the same fear when they came to America: that they would get shot. Around the world, or at least in high schools in France, the impression of America is that we are a trigger-happy, gun-crazed culture in which every day is likely to end with a bullet wound. There are some neighborhoods in America where that is no doubt more accurate than others, but it’s not something I’ve witnessed. Meghan argues that carrying guns makes us
more
safe, not less, because people are less likely to get into violent confrontations when they believe there is a good chance their opponent is armed. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know I am considerably less comfortable around cops and soldiers than I am around receptionists. (And, for the record, only one of our au pairs got shot. That’s a joke.)
Also, if I had a gun, I’d want to use it. I mean, what’s the point in going to all the trouble of getting a concealed-weapon permit if at some point you aren’t going to whip it out and yell, “YOU GONNA
FUCK WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER? YOU GONNA FUCK WITH ME???” I would probably do that every day.
So even though I know that there are millions of gun-carrying lunatics in America, and even though I know people get shot here all the time, because I have never experienced any of it, I tend to dismiss actual “danger.” I mean, there are other kinds of danger certainly. There’s drug danger and unforeseen danger and going-over-waterfalls-in-a-barrel danger and all the rest, but I have to come to view America as a relatively safe and peaceful place. On any given day, the greatest danger I face is the possibility that I have accidentally purchased “lightly salted” pretzels instead of the regular kind, a mistake that fills me with the same dread I might experience upon confronting an armed adversary on the mean streets of North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Meghan:
Anyone who has been to Little Rock knows that the only tourist attraction worth visiting is the Clinton library. Now, this may surprise you, but I am not a huge Clinton fan.
When I first heard about the Lewinsky scandal, I was just fourteen, and my father was talking on a car speakerphone to his then right-hand man (and for the political junkies out there, my father’s “alter ego”), Mark Salter. Mark obviously was not made aware that I was in the car with my father when he said, “Have you heard this shit about this intern fucking Clinton?”
My father immediately switched the phone off speaker and groaned “JEEZEEEE! I’ll call you back when Meghan and I get back from the store.”
Concerned, I said to Dad, “What was that all about? Did the president do something?”
“Don’t worry about it, honey,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.” And that was pretty much it.
Unfortunately for my parents, the Lewinsky blow job was widely discussed in my eighth-grade class. Up until that point I had no idea what a blow job was and couldn’t really comprehend the discussions about “the blue dress,” “the stains,” and “depends on what your
definition of sex is” that were happening all around me. Then during school lunchtime, in a bathroom with a bunch of other eighth-grade girls, one of them proceeded to describe “blow job” in somewhat graphic and accurate detail. Maybe my parents had sheltered me more than most, but I was shocked and confused, and mostly couldn’t stop wondering,
Why would the president or Monica Lewinsky do such a thing?
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Meghan McCain’s first exposure to oral sex was also, sadly, political.
While I dislike President Clinton, and am actually one of those people who still think it was deplorable that he got an intern to blow him in the West Wing during business hours, I am a big fan of Hillary’s. I disagree with many, many of her policies but have a respect for the fact that she pushed through many doors and shattered many glass ceilings for women in politics. I love women who don’t put up with shit, and Hillary clearly doesn’t.
Michael seems to have very little problem with the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, at least in terms of the presidency. I’m not a prude or a hypocrite. I have been very, very honest about the kind of lifestyle I lead, which in Republican circles, is actually considered by some to be controversial. I am pro-life and I don’t believe in abortion, except in cases of rape and incest. I do believe life begins at conception and that abortion is morally wrong. I could never have an abortion. I believe in birth control in all forms and that condoms should be available everywhere. I also believe that people are born gay, which many say is a sin. But I have referred to myself as a “liberal Christian,” in that my God and my Jesus do not make mistakes.