Not the people of New Orleans:
Trick bikes and firearms: the necessities of life.
Certainly not the cops: [5.6MB, Windows Media video]
Helping themselves to shoes in aisle 3. Click the photo to see the video.
Not the municipal government, who could’ve used these now-useless buses in an evacuation:
Could’a hauled out a lot of people with these…
Not Sean Penn:
Read here for the story.
…and definitely not the federal government.
I’m hoping that the soldiers they sent over do a better job.
This is downtime, kids. I’d have posed for this picture in the exact same way.
12 replies on “Nobody’s Gonna Come Out of This One Looking Good…”
Nobody’s Gonna Come Out of This One Looking Good…
So, what, exactly, is your point, here Joe? The stench of this catastrophe is about evenly distributed you figure? Is it all a wash?
Yup. That was pretty much my point.
Now mind you, I’m more sympathetic to the plight of the people of New Orleans; while administrative officials and law enforcement types are going to suffer a loss of “face”, a lot of ordinary folks have lost everything.
I keep asking myself why the social contract always goes out the window once the lights go out.
the age old question “what is wrong with people” comes to mind. im not sure there is ever a good enough justification for some peoples behavior. here is an article about the 10 most intense hurricanes:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/content.cfm?content_type=article&content_type_id=9407
take a read.
It always does? I’m not so sure.
How about “more often than not”, then?
All societies are only ever 4 meals away from anarchy.
Now I’m a little uncomfortable. I’m not sure if you picked up that I was actually trying to be a little bit snarky, so I’m not at all sure if your response was also with tongue wedged in cheek. I’m going to assume you were serious.
AFAIK, in any large group of people, you’re going to find a few idiots/crazees. Bound to happen. I guarantee there’s at least one idjit in your office. No group of people is perfect so, if you’re so inclined, it’s not too difficult to mischaracterize a group by highlighting the sickos. IMHO there’s nothing extra-remarkable about the fact that there’d be at least some looters (and/or that some of them would swipe some decidedly odd things) in this.
Same thing goes for the NOLA cops, given their well-known history of corruption. There are gonna be shameful bad apples in any big bunch. For me, that’s a given.
It would only be remarkable if this kind of behaviour characterized a significant portion of a population (victims, cops, whatever). Or, as in the case of 9/11, there were no reports of shenaniganry. To shine the light on some idjits in the same context as those who were not in a desperate, crazygonuts scenario and in the best postion to help is grossly unfair and (accidentally?) distorts the overall picture.
Everything in its proper proportion, Joey.
The first sentence in my reply was for you, memer, whom I at least sort-of-know via your own blog and can thereby take a few more liberties. The rest was for everyone else reading. That being said, your points are duly noted.
*tips hat*
p.s. sorry if i was unduly huffy, jd. i guess we all have our tender spots, don’t we đ
Quite all right, memer. I don’t mind a little liveliness in my conversations, and you make some pretty important points.
Besides, the stuff to really get mad about with regards to New Orleans and Katrina is yet to come.
Hello World,
You know I live down here in Louisiana and really wish all those movie stars would haul their asses bact to LaLa Land. Where are they the rest of the time when all these poor folks are on the streets begging for food any other time. Down here we live from paycheck to paycheck and most of the folks that say they lost everything actually didn’t own anything to begin with. It’s why we love our family members and animals so much down here, it’s all we have. We work all our lives, the ones that do work, in chemicals and usually get cancer or injured before we can retire. I’d bet ole Sean there has never even cut his own grass much less work a full day in the Louisiana August summer heat. At thirteen, I was running my own shrimpboat and if we got lucky we could trade some shrimp for some steaks(Real Meat) with the tug boat guys. All us coonasses down here need is a good pair of boots to grab by the straps to pull up on. And for the folks trying to make this a black issue outta this by saying stupid crap they don’t have any idea about. All I have to say about that is how much harder can you slap the good hard working white folks in the face over there in Ole Miss that haven’t even a wet house to look at, just a slab. No, those movie stars need to stay over there where they came from because they are just a tad bit late with their cameras and all trying to use us for publicity or maybe get a movie out of. Real men get their hands dirty every single day. If they really wanted to help they would have done away with the Mason Dixon line and brought us all southerners up to the “American Standard”. It’s all about class if anyone wants to start pointing fingers. But remember, when you point a finger at someone look at your hand close because you’ll see three fingers pointing right back at you. No, movie stars need to stay home so we can save the food and water for someone who really needs it.
Mark from Louisiana.