Garland Robinette
Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We end this hour where we began, in New Orleans. For those of us who don't live there, the city was briefly a national stage for a number of prominent journalists who tapped a vein of frustration and rage. But for the New Orleanians themselves, there have been few natives giving voice to their anger and their acute need for answers. The man who has probably filled that role best is Garland Robinette.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Kathleen Blanco, on a busy, busy day with the president and doing all the things you're doing here in New Orleans today, giving us a couple of minutes to talk to us - appreciate it very much. How do I phrase this in a professional way? What the hell is going on with the House Appropriations Committee?
KATHLEEN BLANCO: Well, I just -
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Robinette has a deep-rooted relationship with the Big Easy. He and his now-former wife anchored the local CBS Evening News for years. But long since retired and happily painting portraits, Robinette was just filling in for a sick friend, radio talk show host David Tyree, when he temporarily took to the air on a local AM station. It might have been just a little-noticed favor had the station not had a particularly powerful signal and had Robinette not agreed to come in to work on August 29th, 2005.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: The radio station called and said, �Look, we're kind of short a person, can you come in just for tonight?� And very reluctantly, I said yes. Katrina comes in. The building is literally, with no exaggeration, blown apart. When the water came, we ran down to the cars, got in the cars, drove out through three feet of water. Just nightmare scenario - people swimming in the water, trying to get to us. Got out, made our way to Baton Rouge, where we broadcast in a closet. And during that period, David Tyree died.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, you were recording, as you say, from a closet. And when you're recording from a closet in another city, it's like sending a message in a bottle. So what was the reaction when you found out that you were broadcasting across at least 12 states to the whole New Orleanian diaspora and the rest of the country, that you were being streamed live on the Internet?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: When they told me shortly after the storm that we were streaming on the Internet, I didn't know if somebody was peeing on a computer. I didn't know what that meant, and it just went over. I said, �Great, that's terrific.� Got a caller second or third night after Katrina, when I was kind of going nuts and saying, �America, where are you,� got a call from Australia, and I thought it was a friend of mine making a joke. And somewhere in the interview I realize I'm talking to Australia. And then shortly after, it was France, and then shortly after, it was Japan. And all of a sudden I knew that we have accidentally just landed in the midst of something just never happened before in New Orleans.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, we know that in the wake of Katrina, several news people really raised their profiles � Anderson Cooper on CNN, Shepard Smith on Fox. But the voice of New Orleans seems to have been yours. That's not, strictly speaking, a journalistic role, is it? And after 20 years as one of the local co-anchors on the local TV news, was it a strange position to be in or did it feel natural?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: It's truly not being modest. It's being analytical. It really hasn't been me. This station ended up being who the people listened to when there was no other communications. And being in the midst of it has been terrifying, because TV news, quite frankly, I got bored of it very quickly. I wasn't a very good journalist. I wasn't a serious journalist, and reading into a prompter and knowing that it was primarily blow hair and a lot of it and the look of Ken and Barbie for TV.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You and your wife co-anchored local news on your station here for a while. You say that she was generally regarded as the more serious journalist?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Oh, absolutely, to this day. I was the environmental guy. And back in the '70s [LAUGHS] and '80s, to be an environmental reporter was to be an environmental wacko, and not where I wanted to be. And that's why I quit. When I go on the air today, I will have spent three hours from five o'clock this morning prepping. And when I go on, I'm fully aware that there are no notes and there are no scripts and maybe eight million people listening. That's pretty amazing.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: All humility aside then, you do know -- you are credited with expressing the anger of your community. So here we are, talking on Monday. What are you angry about today, Garland?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Well, it's the election. And I kind of can't wait to get on the air for the battle because I know everybody in the listening audience is going to disagree with me. Everything I've read so far, it was strong voter turnout. New York Times � New Orleans heading for a change. What I read was that 38 percent of the registered voters showed up. I'm embarrassed. I'm horrified. I cannot believe it! We are in a fight for our financial and possibly physical lives here. Thirty-eight percent of the people show up? I can't wait to get on the air to say, �What the hell am I missing here?�
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What was the event on your air that got people most upset?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Ah, that's like choosing from a herd of buffalo. There were a lot of them. I think the one that have gotten the most upset with me is the infamous Nagin interview of the storm.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The interview with the mayor, Ray Nagin.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Yes, Mayor Nagin. [RADIO SHOW CLIP]
MAYOR RAY NAGIN: This is ridiculous.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: You don't, you don't � [OVERTALK]
MAYOR RAY NAGIN: I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: We don't � [OVERTALK]
MAYOR RAY NAGIN: Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city, and then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count. Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here! [PAUSE] It's too doggone late. Now, get off your asses and let's do something and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country. [END RADIO SHOW CLIP]
GARLAND ROBINETTE: He's walking the water with bodies floating past him. He was offered babies by mothers on overpasses that were afraid they were going to die. Where he was, at the Hyatt Hotel, was interconnected with the building where our radio station is. Imagine a huge hotel if you dropped a bomb on it. Well, he was there. He went through unbelievable trauma. He went through war. And when he hit the air with me, you know, none of us had planned that. I didn't know he was going to call. I don't think he really knew he was going to call. Just probably a PR agent gave him a phone and said, you ought to call them, they got a big audience. And he ended up angry and cursing. And after it was over, he got considerable criticism for it. And to this day, I say, you know, you people are just full of it. The man initiated the recovery. There is no doubt in my mind. If he hadn't done that, that recovery might have been two days later.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How do you know that his anger helped quicken the federal response?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Because the President of the United States showed up the next afternoon. And he had named him, and he had cursed and he had railed, just absolutely told it just the way it was, and the president showed up. The president did not show up because it was the time to show up. He was late. He was very, very late. And for the people that hear me saying, �Oh, here we go, a liberal reporter on NPR, I'm a conservative.� You know, and he showed up late. And if the mayor hadn't said that, I don't know when he would have showed up. And not just the president, the congressional representatives, the military, and on and on and on.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think that what you're doing is, strictly speaking, journalism?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: No. No, I don't. Journalism is, to me, not as terrifying but it's a whole lot better. People may not always agree with the journalist, but they're thinking about it. You know, they're covering it, they're doing their research. Times-Picayune, if it hadn't been here, we'd have been screwed. We'd have never known any of the stuff we know today that's helped us. But what I do is [SNAPS FINGERS] spontaneous. It's off the top of the head, and there are innumerable times on a daily basis I say things and go, �What the hell were you talking about, that's stupid!� You know, a [LAUGHING] lady called me the other day and we were grousing about the Army Corps of Engineers, and she said, �What part of the government are they with?� And I said, �I think Homeland Security.� It's the "Army [BROOKE LAUGHS] Corps of Engineers." Well, when you're a journalist, a pretty good chance you're not going to make a dumb mistake like that. So I think what I do has some benefit because people that talk to me don't get edited, but journalism is a whole lot more important.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what do you think your role is in this chapter of New Orleans history?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: I haven't figured that out myself. You know, The Times-Picayune did a nice story and they called me "the Voice of New Orleans." And I was just beyond flattered. You know, but I thought about it later on, and the hospital people that went through nightmares; I mean, if you knew what the hospital industry did here, you wouldn't believe it. It sounds like a bad B-grade movie. --people out of ICU on the floors, and they're using hand pumps to keep them alive, people shooting at 'em, people trying to break in to get drugs, water coming up, and on and on and on. Policemen that went through the same thing, firemen that went through the same thing. And I think to myself, you know, I'm flattered. I really am. But, again, I go back to the true voices here. They're just never going to be heard. They're just never going to be heard!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Garland, thank you very much.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: My pleasure. My pleasure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Garland Robinette hosts his Think Tank on WWL-AM talk radio in New Orleans. We spoke to him in his living room. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER] That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo, and edited by me. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer, this week with help from Rob Christiansen. We also had help from Anni Katz and Mark Phillips. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl. Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from WNYC. Bob Garfield will be back next week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Kathleen Blanco, on a busy, busy day with the president and doing all the things you're doing here in New Orleans today, giving us a couple of minutes to talk to us - appreciate it very much. How do I phrase this in a professional way? What the hell is going on with the House Appropriations Committee?
KATHLEEN BLANCO: Well, I just -
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Robinette has a deep-rooted relationship with the Big Easy. He and his now-former wife anchored the local CBS Evening News for years. But long since retired and happily painting portraits, Robinette was just filling in for a sick friend, radio talk show host David Tyree, when he temporarily took to the air on a local AM station. It might have been just a little-noticed favor had the station not had a particularly powerful signal and had Robinette not agreed to come in to work on August 29th, 2005.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: The radio station called and said, �Look, we're kind of short a person, can you come in just for tonight?� And very reluctantly, I said yes. Katrina comes in. The building is literally, with no exaggeration, blown apart. When the water came, we ran down to the cars, got in the cars, drove out through three feet of water. Just nightmare scenario - people swimming in the water, trying to get to us. Got out, made our way to Baton Rouge, where we broadcast in a closet. And during that period, David Tyree died.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, you were recording, as you say, from a closet. And when you're recording from a closet in another city, it's like sending a message in a bottle. So what was the reaction when you found out that you were broadcasting across at least 12 states to the whole New Orleanian diaspora and the rest of the country, that you were being streamed live on the Internet?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: When they told me shortly after the storm that we were streaming on the Internet, I didn't know if somebody was peeing on a computer. I didn't know what that meant, and it just went over. I said, �Great, that's terrific.� Got a caller second or third night after Katrina, when I was kind of going nuts and saying, �America, where are you,� got a call from Australia, and I thought it was a friend of mine making a joke. And somewhere in the interview I realize I'm talking to Australia. And then shortly after, it was France, and then shortly after, it was Japan. And all of a sudden I knew that we have accidentally just landed in the midst of something just never happened before in New Orleans.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, we know that in the wake of Katrina, several news people really raised their profiles � Anderson Cooper on CNN, Shepard Smith on Fox. But the voice of New Orleans seems to have been yours. That's not, strictly speaking, a journalistic role, is it? And after 20 years as one of the local co-anchors on the local TV news, was it a strange position to be in or did it feel natural?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: It's truly not being modest. It's being analytical. It really hasn't been me. This station ended up being who the people listened to when there was no other communications. And being in the midst of it has been terrifying, because TV news, quite frankly, I got bored of it very quickly. I wasn't a very good journalist. I wasn't a serious journalist, and reading into a prompter and knowing that it was primarily blow hair and a lot of it and the look of Ken and Barbie for TV.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You and your wife co-anchored local news on your station here for a while. You say that she was generally regarded as the more serious journalist?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Oh, absolutely, to this day. I was the environmental guy. And back in the '70s [LAUGHS] and '80s, to be an environmental reporter was to be an environmental wacko, and not where I wanted to be. And that's why I quit. When I go on the air today, I will have spent three hours from five o'clock this morning prepping. And when I go on, I'm fully aware that there are no notes and there are no scripts and maybe eight million people listening. That's pretty amazing.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: All humility aside then, you do know -- you are credited with expressing the anger of your community. So here we are, talking on Monday. What are you angry about today, Garland?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Well, it's the election. And I kind of can't wait to get on the air for the battle because I know everybody in the listening audience is going to disagree with me. Everything I've read so far, it was strong voter turnout. New York Times � New Orleans heading for a change. What I read was that 38 percent of the registered voters showed up. I'm embarrassed. I'm horrified. I cannot believe it! We are in a fight for our financial and possibly physical lives here. Thirty-eight percent of the people show up? I can't wait to get on the air to say, �What the hell am I missing here?�
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What was the event on your air that got people most upset?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Ah, that's like choosing from a herd of buffalo. There were a lot of them. I think the one that have gotten the most upset with me is the infamous Nagin interview of the storm.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The interview with the mayor, Ray Nagin.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Yes, Mayor Nagin. [RADIO SHOW CLIP]
MAYOR RAY NAGIN: This is ridiculous.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: You don't, you don't � [OVERTALK]
MAYOR RAY NAGIN: I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: We don't � [OVERTALK]
MAYOR RAY NAGIN: Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city, and then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count. Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here! [PAUSE] It's too doggone late. Now, get off your asses and let's do something and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country. [END RADIO SHOW CLIP]
GARLAND ROBINETTE: He's walking the water with bodies floating past him. He was offered babies by mothers on overpasses that were afraid they were going to die. Where he was, at the Hyatt Hotel, was interconnected with the building where our radio station is. Imagine a huge hotel if you dropped a bomb on it. Well, he was there. He went through unbelievable trauma. He went through war. And when he hit the air with me, you know, none of us had planned that. I didn't know he was going to call. I don't think he really knew he was going to call. Just probably a PR agent gave him a phone and said, you ought to call them, they got a big audience. And he ended up angry and cursing. And after it was over, he got considerable criticism for it. And to this day, I say, you know, you people are just full of it. The man initiated the recovery. There is no doubt in my mind. If he hadn't done that, that recovery might have been two days later.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How do you know that his anger helped quicken the federal response?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: Because the President of the United States showed up the next afternoon. And he had named him, and he had cursed and he had railed, just absolutely told it just the way it was, and the president showed up. The president did not show up because it was the time to show up. He was late. He was very, very late. And for the people that hear me saying, �Oh, here we go, a liberal reporter on NPR, I'm a conservative.� You know, and he showed up late. And if the mayor hadn't said that, I don't know when he would have showed up. And not just the president, the congressional representatives, the military, and on and on and on.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think that what you're doing is, strictly speaking, journalism?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: No. No, I don't. Journalism is, to me, not as terrifying but it's a whole lot better. People may not always agree with the journalist, but they're thinking about it. You know, they're covering it, they're doing their research. Times-Picayune, if it hadn't been here, we'd have been screwed. We'd have never known any of the stuff we know today that's helped us. But what I do is [SNAPS FINGERS] spontaneous. It's off the top of the head, and there are innumerable times on a daily basis I say things and go, �What the hell were you talking about, that's stupid!� You know, a [LAUGHING] lady called me the other day and we were grousing about the Army Corps of Engineers, and she said, �What part of the government are they with?� And I said, �I think Homeland Security.� It's the "Army [BROOKE LAUGHS] Corps of Engineers." Well, when you're a journalist, a pretty good chance you're not going to make a dumb mistake like that. So I think what I do has some benefit because people that talk to me don't get edited, but journalism is a whole lot more important.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what do you think your role is in this chapter of New Orleans history?
GARLAND ROBINETTE: I haven't figured that out myself. You know, The Times-Picayune did a nice story and they called me "the Voice of New Orleans." And I was just beyond flattered. You know, but I thought about it later on, and the hospital people that went through nightmares; I mean, if you knew what the hospital industry did here, you wouldn't believe it. It sounds like a bad B-grade movie. --people out of ICU on the floors, and they're using hand pumps to keep them alive, people shooting at 'em, people trying to break in to get drugs, water coming up, and on and on and on. Policemen that went through the same thing, firemen that went through the same thing. And I think to myself, you know, I'm flattered. I really am. But, again, I go back to the true voices here. They're just never going to be heard. They're just never going to be heard!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Garland, thank you very much.
GARLAND ROBINETTE: My pleasure. My pleasure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Garland Robinette hosts his Think Tank on WWL-AM talk radio in New Orleans. We spoke to him in his living room. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER] That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo, and edited by me. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer, this week with help from Rob Christiansen. We also had help from Anni Katz and Mark Phillips. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl. Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from WNYC. Bob Garfield will be back next week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
Produced by WNYC Studios