she chuckled slightly and said, 'this is working very well for them'

remember those words and that attitude? i sure do

One Year Ago Today: Barbara Bush's Infamous Remarks About Hurricane Katrina Evacuees

By E&P Staff Published: September 05, 2006 12:15 AM ET
NEW YORK One year ago, on Sept. 5, 2005, with the Gulf Coast still reeling -- to say the least -- from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, former First Lady Barbara Bush appeared with he husband in Houston at a relief center for some of the tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans.There she was interviewed for American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, not aired everywhere. An E&P contributor happened to be listening in the New York area and wrote down her remarks, in which she seemed to suggest that, thanks to the disaster, things were actually working out "very well" for underprivileged evacuees. After some checking, E&P quickly launched a online story that became one of the most popular in the history of the web site. The former First Lady's comments soon were quoted elsewhere, from Drudge to CBS, and became part of the official history of the period, ending up, among other places, in Spike Lee's recent HBO film on the flood..............