Hurricanes + Politicians = Refugees

Hurricanes, refugees and politicians...
....three words that should never be used in the same sentence. Having spent more than a week trying to help Gulf coast residents, I'm certain that I'll never want to see those three words in conjunction again. The symbiotic relationships are frightening.
All along the Gulf Coast, the devastation's absolutely beyond belief. However....since the race card doesn't play well when it's primarily middle-class white people whose homes have been wiped off the face of the earth, my colleagues in the media have chosen to focus on the urban blight previously called New Orleans.
Don't get me wrong, for a long weekend with three expense account dinners, New Orleans was fine.
After that, it was hard to overlook the seedy characters, grimy landscape and stench that is part of the inescapable fact this place knows it belongs on the bottom of a lake. And that sensation many people mistake for "excitement" in New Orleans is really the human body's innate "danger reaction" but they're either too-drunk or too-tourist stupid to realize that the "colorful folk" of New Orleans look at the tourist the same way wolves look at the sheep.
But that's another rant for another time.
Over the past week, I've reached another depressing conclusion: the average "media type" of today weighs something on the order of 74 pounds (female) - 180 pounds (male), has perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect skin (with cosmetic assistance of course), stands something in the range of 4'10" - 6'3", and collectively - intellectually, is less than a half-inch deep. They're universally lacking any historical perspective, sociological background - and, most definitely lack the ability to speak at length about - anything. The possible exception to "anything" however, might be the "well-known and apparently accepted media presumption" that George Bush controls weather, local politicians and thugs worldwide. In other words, if it's bad, Bush did it.
Their "storm coverage" is so amazingly shallow as to make a child's wading pool look like the Mariannas Trench. They have stood in the same shady spots for days as assorted rabble-rousers marched by their cameras, protesting their having been "forgotten" by the federal government. All the while, these journalists have mugged for the camera (as directed through their IFBs) like children amazed that moths come to lights - or that protesters only protested where they could be on television. It's a corollary they've yet to connect in their collective synapse (I know synapse is singular, and I stand by the observation).
Here's a bit of television producer "insider" knowledge: at network television sporting events crowd cameras are occasionally referred to as "asshole magnets" and the "anchors" as "talking dogs" or "meat puppets". Now YOU understand why.
Most amazingly, the now-geriatric Geraldo Rivera has produced more excitement than his 3,427 fellow "correspondents" in New Orleans - collectively.
Journalism HAS hit an absolute new low.
Geraldo was always been considered the limbo bar of taste, but today, he shines when surrounded by a fleet of idiot anchors from the various cable news services. Sorry, Greta (Fox), breathlessly-nasal Rita (PMSNBC), and Nancy "but for the Grace of God you're nowhere near real people" (CNN), your efforts to be controversial and confrontational just don't cut it when faced with a professional mis-reporter of the facts with Geraldo's spin experience. Hell, even his makeup looks better...
Here's a suggestion from Geraldo's own career...find a Vonnegut descendant to marry (then ditch when you milk their connections dry), change your Jewish name in order to gain admission into a 6-week "instant journalist" program for minorities at Columbia, then spend three decades tossing facts and fairness to the wind to create a name for yourself. At that point, you, too, may have a Grecian-formula moustache, windswept hair and a luxury yacht from which to champion the downtrodden you've ridden like mules along the road to success. Adam Clayton Powell would be proud.
But I was talking about the fabled Crescent City, wasn't I?
I watched first-hand as Miami survived Hurricane Andrew. A city blessed with thousands of illegal aliens, thugs and Colombian and Haitian"gangs" Miami managed to avoid the carnage visited on New Orleans by their own, apparently legal residents.
At New Orleans it was suddenly Mardi Gras with plasma-screen beads...an "instant credit hurricane-sale".
For God's sake, how stupid do you have to be to steal electronic equipment in a town without electricity?
Never mind, we've answered that question for the ages, haven't we?
Hell yes, "let the good times roll!"
And the really excellent mayor was right there on the job. The con job, that is. Sitting in his hotel room, whining that, once again, "the man was holding down the poor."
What is that expression, you insufferable dumbass, er, Mr. Mayor? Oh yea, "you da man!"
You, Mr. Mayor, are "Da man" who managed to make the mandatory non-compulsory; turn evacuation into "never-mind" and then has the stones to blame George Bush for not flying down to New Orleans to personally drive the 75 buses you've left to flood in the lowest parking lot around the Superdome (oops, silly mayor).
If stupid was painful, New Orleans' mayor should be in agony.
And the governor - who can forget her? She wants to "slap" the President for his lack of action. If declaring a disaster area two-days before the fact is inaction, she should be bitch-slapped by the President - and every resident of New Orleans - for failing to call in enough Louisiana National Guardsmen BEFORE the storm hit and I-10 was wiped out, her general failure to agree to the issuance of a "no-shit, run for the hills warning" to her citizenry - despite the urging of the President, and the total arrogance as be unreachable for federal authorities seeking to warn here - AGAIN - by phone BEFORE the crap went solidly into New Orleans' ventilator.
The collective stupidity of the politicians hurt their core constituents. Not to mention the ill and ignorant who they abandoned to the good offices of the criminal element that stuck around for the easy pickings after Katrina.
If you think I'm exaggerating the criminal element, go check the freezer-full of corpses from the Superdome. There's a seven-year old kid in there with a throat slit ear-to-ear who gives mute testimony to the kind of unsupervised animals you left behind when you, Mr. Mayor and Ms. Governor, left them to go play partisan politics.
The poor of New Orleans were once again screwed, then abandoned - by the same crooked political types who have screwed them time and again.
New Orleans IS founded on the "bigger thief" theory - and cream isn't the only thing that floats- or rises to the top. In Louisiana political circles, crap does float.
Can you name one other state that boasted about a political campaign where one candidate's bumper sticker bragged: "Hold your nose and vote for me"?
Didn't think so.
In Louisiana, he won - two terms. The second AFTER being convicted of a felony.
In New Orleans, it's better the devil you know, you know?
When the rest of the world looks at New Orleans, they think they're seeing how the "two Americas" they want to believe exist. That polarized America where the wealthy pole has abandoned the poor one.
But, they're mistaken.
They're not seeing America in New Orleans....
They're seeing what life's like six feet below sea level in a swamp.