"But it's wrong!"

Nothing is driving me up the wall more than the tut-tutting coming from the media moralists covering the New Orleans disaster. I watched some starched and quaffed reporter from KTRK last night trying his lily-white best to shame some shirtless black kid rummaging through the soaked remnants of a convenience store. "But it's wrong!" says the reporter. The kid just laughed. The reporter comes back to his tidy, well-appointed home in Garden Oaks the next day while that kid stays in his drowned city... at least until he and everyone else are forced out. What the hell does he come back to in a month or so? What's left? And I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed that the media depicts dirt-poor (and now homeless) blacks who take food, water, and beer from grocery stores as crazed thieves while white folk under the same circumstances are simply trying to "find provisions". In any case, there are far more important things to worry about right now, especially as it's becoming clear that the damage control situation has been botched. The Army Corp of Engineers dropped the ball on their attempt, or non-attempt as the case may be, to dam up the 17th Street Canal and the mayor is livid. Most of the LA National Guard and the equipment needed for rescue operations that would otherwise have been on the scene in a heartbeat are in Iraq. The number of out-of-state Guard in NO is dangerously inadequate. And what the fuck happened to FEMA? Even though experts have been warning about a potential disaster in the Big Easy for years, there seems to have been almost no plan whatsoever to deal with the situation when it did arise. The Coast Guard and Red Cross, OTOH, are doing their best to pick up the slack. The Superdome refugees are now to be relocated to the Astrodome. At this point, I don't see how this disaster can't trigger some kind of horrible economic domino effect.

Meanwhile, George "Disaster President" Bush was jamming Tuesday on a special presidential guitar presented to him by Mark Wills. I know it's hard work, but go, George, go!