The "Whoops" factor

It's one thing being a racist in the privacy of your own home, but when a city...say New Orleans...finds itself treated worse than a third world country on account of its substantial African American demographic, then a simple "I'm sorry" isn't going to cut the mustard.

To let a whole city sit without food and water for five days after billions of dollars have been poured into something called "Homeland Security" unfortunately smacks of more than a simple "whoops, we didn't really think that the hurricane would be quite that bad." No it seems more of a "why waste money on a bunch of poor black folk who were told to get out of the city but didn't because they're ignorant."

For an administration that prides itself on a spanky clean image based on the smiling faces of Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell, this is not so good.

On the other hand, Bush isn't up for re-election, so who cares, really. Which seems to be the attitude here in the gym, even though that business about Public Works I blogged about a few days ago still weighs on the members. Any mention of diverting funds from the corporations, say, for government, is considered impolite for conversation and generally a good reason for expulsion.

So the hurricane has become like an elephant in the gym, no a dinosaur, or a blue whale even. And the spinmeisters working their amazing journalistic treadmills are trying to impose a kind of discipline on the past five days. If all goes well, in fact, those days will never have really existed at all.