Will There Ever Be a Child Named Katrina Again

What to say what to say what to say.....

I was at work today, and took a break on the computer to catch up with what's going on in NO and saw that the worst reared its head after we were told be the media outlets that the city had escaped Monday.

I'm watching the cable coverage now. The only channel I can stomach for more than a few minutes is CNN. This jackass Scarborough in MSNBC, CNBC whichever it is, was showing just how useless he is. He's one of these talking head commentary show knits who wouldn't know journalism if he was run through printing press. He was the first to start talking about the looting, expressing his outrage at the idea that city officials weren't taking the proper stand & disparagingly mentioning that city officials were choosing to concentrate their efforts on saving lives. He made the comment that he couldn't imagine Rudi Giuliani would let it happen. No time like the present to politicize an issue, is it...
So, Fox jumped on the bandwagon of flashing the same videos of people leaving stores carrying cloths and boxes. Strangely enough the stories on these channels all seemed to shift to that at the same time. Ironically, I went to the Times-Picayune website about 30 minutes later and there was already a story up about Gov. Blanco vowing to end the looting and violence featuring a shot of an officer standing outside a store holding a shotgun, appearing to bark orders.
Something I found interesting in that story was this line:

"At one store, hordes of people from all ages, races and walks of life grabbed food and water."

Interesting to me because all I keep seeing is video of Black folk running amok. I guess White people are invisible when carrying stolen goods. The only images I saw that seemed to imply White looting was very pixelated digital video and that spot was focusing on the assertion that the looting was initially people breaking into stores to get food and water.

Part of what has me so taken aback with this is that the VAST majority of faces you see in these images (regardless pf the theme of the accompanying story) from NO are Black. Black people on roofs begging to be picked up. Black people waiting with growing impatience to be bussed to refugee centers...

I can't understand why, if the expectations for the storm was THIS bad, why wasn't more done to get people who didn't have means to leave or places to go get out of the city. At the risk of politicization, I wonder how much more man/machine power would be available for this effort were there not such a military presence in Iraq.

I'm in a play that's opening on the 15th. I'm nowhere near off-book. Frankly, I have no urge to study lines. Everytime I resign myself to the fact that there's nothing I could really do, I start watching again and want get in my truck and go. I just watched the video of the first busload of people to get to the Astrodome.

I thought I was going to have something constructive to say about what happens when the underlying anger in poor people has an opportunity/excuse/reason to manifest itself, but I don't.
I'm trying to figure out what people who are stealing merchandise plan on doing with it. You won't be able to sell it - who with money is still there? There's no point in stealing electronics for personal use - no electricity for what, a month? Jacking ambulances? The line between real close to and way past crazy is real, real thin - especially when hell has broken loose. But BLack people PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ!!! STOP IT!!!!!! Minister Farakhan, get your bassboat and head to Orleans Parish. A Million More warmup is needed in the delta.

Well, it's 12:45. I'm watching Fox Sports now. I may just muster the desire to look at my script.