The Big Easy Becomes the Big Seriously Scary

It's a Yahoo report, which means it's got the bare details of what's going on in New Orleans. But even the bare details are too awful for words. As a New Yorker, who has some idea of the kind of what kinds of horrors a city can endure, my thoughts are with the people of New Orleans.

I can't even condemn the looters. How are you or I to know why they're looting? As NO's mayor says, "This is a desperate SOS." Desperate people can do things they wouldn't normally dream of doing. Things they might feel embarassed about later on. I doubt anyone down in that city woke up and thought "No one here? Shops closed? Fucking A! I always wanted a new pair of sneakers!"

Let's focus on answering their SOS before we start handing out arrest warrants.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tell us something we don't already know

The MTA is clueless. Man, if you need a place to vent or learn the full story behind mass transit horror stories, check out Gothamist. The MTA admitted that the service was not acceptable on many accounts, from the flooding to the fact that the MTA's website was overwhelmed. Then there's also the fact that the MTA was urging people not to take the subways and opt for a bus instead, only for buses to be (A) few and far between and (B) crowded as anything. They forgot to mention "(C) fucking slow." Don't the people at the MTA feel really stupid when they say shit like this? MTA CEO Lee Sander said, "We really are sorry about the inconvenience that New Yorkers had to deal with. In terms of how it happened, we had three inches of rain in an hour. The system is designed to handle 1.5 inches." This isn't quite as appalling as last year's 9-day Queens blackout--you know, the one where Con Ed lied about the number of places without power--but it still in
Read more

We're the ones we've been waiting for, and all that

Via Blue Wave News , Van Jones' speech at the Campus Progress National Conference, which rang true to this cautiously optimistic liberal. More from Mr. Jones, via HuffPo: We are trying to build a pro-democracy movement in a country that, at least for eight years, was run by [inaudible] authoritarians. And it is not going to be easy. But I tell you, the most important thing I can say is... We feed the fearmongers. We feed the politics of division, by giving it so much attention and letting it fill up the space in our mind. We have to feed the hope. This country is an extraordinary -- I get choked up -- this is an incredible, beautiful country... That little idiot box off in the corner trying to depress you and make you feel like this is a horrible country and everybody believes evil things about the president... it is just not true. Cut it off, just cut it off and walk down the street and talk to real people in this country. They are sophisticated. They are wise. They don't kno
Read more