It's a Fair Cop

I have made some very flippant remarks about the situation in New Orleans. And of all people, Anne Rice has taken me to the woodshed and I have to say she's not wrong.

God, that hurt to say.

The Mayor of New Orleans, I caught part of his act on 60 Minutes, just part. He reminds me of Emmanuel Cleaver, formerly the Mayor of Kansas City with Commie roots in the SCLC back in the day. But this New Orleans cat, he's more so. Southern. Kind of like how the Govna uh'Mississippi says 'Guffport' instead of 'Gulfport.'

But he ran some numbers and I can't say he seemed full of shit. Politicians, they usually are, and he is supposedly one of them, so maybe...

But he put the initial evacuation at 80%, leaving 100,000 people who chose to ride out the storm. After the post-storm deluge, they've evacuated 35,000 more, and maybe 15,000 to go. So that leaves 50,000 people unnaccounted for.

I'm sure the death toll won't be quite there, and he didn't say that either. But he did point out that it's a substantial death toll if you put it at 5% or 15%. In other words: worse than 9/11.

How arrogant am I to make snarky blogs about building a city below sea level from a den that's below grade?

The people who didn't evacuate, well, why? Why didn't they at least go to the 'dome? Well, maybe they rode out bigger storms in the same house, and they've got heirlooms they don't want looted that don't carry so well. And after the storm passed, it looked like Guffport and Biloxi had it worse.

But if you had money, you went to a high-rise or got out of town. If you had money and didn't evacuate the before the storm, you loaded up your SUV and got out while there was still a road.

If you were poor and not keen on leaving your modest home to looters, or had a medical condition that doesn't travel well to sports arenas, you'd stay put, right? They'll get the power on in a day or two, right?

And then, with no rain, the water rises. What the fuck, right? Well, it can't go any higher than that, right? Next thing you know you're in your attic trying to keep rats away from you.

They haven't even begun fishing the bodies out. In a few weeks when it's drained out, they get to go through all those flooded houses and find what the rats and alligators and rabid, feral dogs didn't eat.

And for a variety of reasons (and I blame the War on Drugs and Civil Rights Act among other things), the poor in the South is going to translate to black. There'll be white bodies too, and I don't place a higher value on a corpse on account of color, but the political ramificaitons of that are huge. And they'll probably lead to well meaning policies that keep blacks disproportionately poor.