So I’m flipping through the channels last night and I come upon a re-broadcast of the BBC show, Top Gear.
Top Gear Season 9 Episode 3
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Premise: Buy a car in Miami and drive it to New Orleans, with the original premise being to see if they can buy a car at Point A and sell it at Point B and take less of a hit from the resale loss than you would if you rented a car for the trip.
However, between planning for the show and the filming, Hurricane Katrina hit.
They arrive in NOLA a year after Katrina and make multiple remarks about the devastation still visible and ask one question that goes way over the line: How can the world’s richest country still have a city so devastated after 365 days to rebuild?
With all the other little digs from the nose in the air Brits, which are easily repelled as I believe the guys are just insanely jealous, this is the one that actually pissed me off.
Fortunately, though maybe these intellectual geniuses didn’t quite get it, the question answers itself.
When they get to NOLA, they decide to just give the cars away. Wasting UK Taxpayer money is, apparently, no problem for their moral centers.
However, for one of the cars, the Cadillac, no one was willing to take it. A free car to people whose only vehicle had been washed away in the storm surge, and they wouldn’t take it.
That is why New Orleans was in the shape it was in.
And to top it off, another of the cars was a 1989 Camaro. The producer had made a simple mistake and told the woman at the church who was helping these guys give the cars away that it was a 1991 Camaro. She threatened to sue the BBC for misrepresentation. Though in what I’m sure she thought was a reasonable offer, she said that she would drop her lawsuit for $20,000.
Have any of the Christian types in and around NOLA ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah? Maybe the God of Abraham only uses fire and brimstone once and then uses water the next time?
Something to think about.
You mean Katrina was just an enema?
I thought the Alabama scenes could be easily reproduced in Britain. Just put on the side of any vehicle “Footballers are a bunch of pansies” and see the response you get in any one of the cities.
Yeah, I generally love Top Gear, but that episode really pissed me off.
I know they are doing some pandering to their audience, but good grief.
T.G. also pisses me off every time they try to review an American pickup truck. They love that one Toyota truck (the one that won’t die) but give them a Ford and they just go nuts. They just don’t get it.
That said, 98% of the time it’s still a fun show to watch.
R.S.
Did it take the government of the mighty British Empire a single year to rebuild London after the end of World War 2?
….
Yeah, thought so. Wankers!
When the N.O. dike broke through for the 2nd time, I said it then:
“That just proves that New Orleans is a Two-Flusher”.
True then, true now.
I wanna see TidyBowl be the new sponsor of the Superdome. And a 50′ flush-handle mounted to the side of the building. It would raise the town’s credibility, ever so slightly.
Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX