The Unshaming of America

Reason: Echo Chamber in the Superdome: A Louisiana National Guardsman explains how he dealt with false rumors being piped into Ground Zero of Hurricane Katrina

Lots of things we heard about New Orleans after Katrina just aren't true:

• Rescue helicopters were never fired on


• There were hundreds of National Guardsmen in the Superdome the entire time, equipped with radio communications and responding to all security issues.

New Orleanians have been kind of cheated, because now everybody thinks that they just turned to animals, and that there was complete lawlessness and utter abandon, when that wasn't the case. Because if there was, we would have completely lost control of the Dome. And we never did. People just kind of hung on, through the heat and through everything, until they got on a bus and left.