Da Katrina Blues

Ugh--who would have thought that the tragedy that has berift New Orleans could have happened in America? In the way that it does, the media has skewed the image of a proud city so that the average viewer of the 11 o'clock news would have to believe that the only people in the Big Easy are black, poor, and filthy.

Granted, the demographic of NOLA is decidedly of African heritage--the statistic I heard was 60%. That creates a majority, but the thing that has been missing from television coverage is caucasian faces. Of course, there are the faces of Stone Phillips et.al. but I mean beyond the face of a anchorman in Metarie using a collapsed Citgo station as a backdrop.

Naturally, I can explain why the faces we have seemed uniformly dark--it's the classic seperationist statement that we as a nation have suffered under all along. White people have advantage. They have cars and don't depend wholly on public transportation. They own insurance policies because they have the ability to pay State Farm and buy milk for the baby. they are a group who live in the Garden District in an antebellum home, switching on a computer and actually looked at a tremendous storm tracking directly upon them.

In short, the white folk packed up the Suburban and got the hell out of town.

In her blog, Margaret Cho calls it racism, but I disagree. I believe the fact is the people that were left behind, the people that had to remain were the lowest, most poverty stricken and unfortunate demographic in that city. "Forgotten men," if you will. As a matter of coincidence, they are nearly all black. People who are looting are people who never have had much. At the outset, they were ravaging department stores and lifting luxury items from Canal Street boutiques, which is just wrong under any circumstance. Now they are looting Piggly Wiggly for necessities. It's probably morally wrong, but I can live with it. My point is if an expected evacuation of ANY major city occurred, the exact same thing would happen. People with the ability to leave would, leaving Ezra Pound's 'huddled masses yearning to breathe free...wretched refuse of your teeming shores' behind as fodder for the CBS evening news.

Turn the tables and drop a catastrophe wholly unexpected--earthquake or terrorist attack for instance. The vision that you would see on your television screen would be so different. As the song says, "Everybody bleeds," and that would be evident. Campbell Brown would be speaking with people of all different ethnicities and experiences. She would stand not only at the NOLA convention center seeing a slumped dead man in a wheelchair clutching a note for his next of kin, but also in front of one of those amazing mansions with a Charles Street streetcar sticking out of a bay window and perhaps a really scratched up 7 series and a handful of Polaroids for the adjuster who is pulling up in his Explorer.

But that's obviously not the case. I'll give W snaps for his chat on his way south this morning. Obviously, he looked at the evening news last night (as I did) and saw an environment that was not fit for dogs. Perhaps it was a visual of unfortunate souls in shock, obviously dehydrated and about to become horribly ill. Maybe he heard Harry Connick Jr. from Baton Rouge saying "I don't understand--we drove right up to the convention center, no police blocks, and no problem." Could it have been a field reporter describing people that wanted to nation to see their desperate situation so that aid would come, describing a peaceful yet frustrated attitude. W said "It's unacceptable" and strutted off to Marine One with his secretary of Homeland Security. One can only hope that he will use his now infamous 'kick ass and take names' bravado to get some assistance down there.

Had I known that I wouldn't be a hinderance, I would take time off and drive down south to assist in whatever way I could. I was so affected by what I have seen over the last couple days and the apparent apathy that we as a nation have displayed. It really pisses me off because things like that aren't supposed to happen here.

and rightfully, they shouldn't.