Posted on 09/25/2005 5:40:21 PM PDT by abb
NEW ORLEANS — Puppies and celebrities can be a powerful combination. Especially for a dramatic television rescue from a flooded hospital.
Witness a recent segment of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" from the devastated Gulf Coast.
Viewers watched actor Matthew McConaughey heroically rescuing stranded animals — and the doctor who stayed behind with them — from the flooded Lindy Boggs Medical Center in New Orleans.
The segment glossed over one key point: The animals were being rescued anyway.
"Matthew's search for stories of people that he could help led him to an abandoned hospital in New Orleans," Oprah Winfrey told viewers. "Inside were beloved pets that families had been forced to leave behind during this evacuation. One man vowed to keep them alive. And Matthew went to help him."
What she didn't tell viewers is that McConaughey and the Oprah crew jumped into the effort after two Dallas companies already had begun the rescue: Tenet Healthcare and Aviation Services Group, which Tenet had hired to evacuate its hospitals.
The segment mentioned neither company nor any other rescuers.
The Oprah clip begins on Labor Day with McConaughey entering the "abandoned" hospital wearing a white surgical mask. He tells the story of Dr. James Riopelle, who stayed after the last people were evacuated the previous Friday. He was keeping a promise to fellow staffers that he would look after the pets.
Winfrey tells viewers he had been living there "without food and without water," even though Tenet had dropped enough to keep him and the animals going for days.
Tenet had arranged for helicopters to evacuate the animals on Sunday, Sept. 4, after it had taken care of the people in its other facilities and the day before McConaughey arrived.
advertising The Aviation Services team affectionately labeled its project Operation Noah's Ark.
"As we landed, we knew we were in the right spot because there was literally a mountain of dog food," said Brent Hudspeth, who helped plan the pet rescue. "He had more dog food than he knew what to do with."
On Sunday, Winfrey said on the show, an attempted rescue "went terribly wrong."
"This chopper crashed on landing," she said, showing the damaged red helicopter.
It wasn't much of a crash. The chopper had been on unstable ground and simply tipped over with nobody in it, people involved in the rescue effort said.
But that ended the operation for the day and gave Oprah's crew the opportunity to join the rescue.
A spokeswoman said the segments were meant to illustrate relief efforts already on the ground through the lens of Winfrey's "celebrity friends."
McConaughey "was sort of the Oprah show on-location reporter," publicist Carly Ubersox said. "He consistently refers to we, as being part of a group effort."
Witnesses say McConaughey and the rest of the Oprah crew did contribute to the rescue, carrying animals and paddling a boat to a makeshift landing pad nearby.
The pets were airlifted from Lindy Boggs and later transported to the Hattiesburg, Miss., airport. Kent Glenn, a North Texas veterinarian, arranged to have the pets taken from the region, and Tenet established a Web site to reunite the pets with their owners.
The final count, McConaughey told viewers, was 50 dogs, 18 cats and two hamsters.
The fog of war may have led to varying tallies. The aviation firm put it at 41 dogs, 16 cats and two gerbils.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
Fake, but accurate enough for ratings.
Doggie and kitty ping
I don't care, I still love Oprah.
The lefty seattle times investigating the real stories,oprah and pets,ha!
bump
Why rescue an animal that has the life expectancy of a gallon of milk?
Oprah is an entertainer and most supposed journalists are that as well. Pick both your nose and your news carefully.
Phony balony, plastic banana, goodtime rock 'n' rollers. But hey! It don't have to be the truth as long as it makes for good TV. Ratings. It's about the ratings.
So does Tom Cruise, apparently...
Because the worth of a living thing is not measured by its lifespan.
I've rescued animals that have lived a decade, and I've rescued animals that only knew kindness for mere days before they died.
Oh, look ... a chicken!
(Sorry, I am adhd).
You're a noble human being.
Maybe I'm being a little tough on Oprah and Mathew.
Hamsters do occupy a "special place" in the lives of some Hollywood celebs.
Which is all she was after....the ratings....
bump
Thank you for posting that collage!
Some of those photos just tear me up!
I love the one of the doggie giving a kiss to the person in the red shirt. The little girl in the bottom left corner looks like she won the lottery! I think I read that she found and rescued that dog at a destroyed gas station.
As a pet lover, I completely understand what these people are going through with their pets. If I was told that I had to evacuate from a storm (I came close with Hurricane Isabel), my cat is one of the first things to go with me. That AND my clothes, photographs, important papers, movies, cds, all into the truck and car. AND some furniture too if I thought it was going to be REAL bad and the house was going to be under water.
And the one sKerry saved.........
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