NEW ORLEANS, KATRINA AND COMMON SENSE

(sigh)

I have a feeling this post is gonna elicit lots of emails from outraged folks, so I apologize up front if I offend you.

We've been beseiged all week by "anniversary" documentaries, newscasts, magazine articles and newspaper stories about the devastation Hurricane Katrina wrecked on New Orleans last year. That's most likely understandable since it was a natural disaster of major proportions and resulted in death and destruction to many people, homes, businesses. The City of New Orleans itself was nearly washed away.

Now. As sympathetic as I am to the individuals in that city about what happened, I hope the rebuilding of the city will result in also a cleansing of the corruption, decadence and incompetence that was pervasive. The looting and shooting that followed the storm was shocking. Some of that can be expected; but rather than the people pulling together and helping one another, they reverted to anarchy. One can't help but compare New Orleans' bad behavior to New York's exemplary behavior following 9/11.

I know people who have fallen in love with New Orleans over the years. They love the debauchery, the bare-breasted women, the 24/7 party atmosphere, the casinos. Some even mention they love the "old south" look, the jazz-on-the-streets, the food. But it's a dirty city, crime ridden, has the feel that you must sidestep the vomit on every street. I've seen nothing there that interested me, saw nothing "southern" about it. And that was on a GOOD day.

Before Katrina, the city was impoverished, dependent on tourism, struggling to overcome kickbacks and contract fraud from its former mayor, Marc Morial. It employs one of the most (if not THE most) corrupt police forces in the country, has no infrastructure to speak of and no competence in its local government.

It was crumbling pre-Katrina; let's hope this post-Katrina effort will be more than a correction of the breeched levees. Let's hope the city can sniff out some integrity.

(sigh)