Where C-SPAN is the local TV news
|
|
| The Washington Canard Where C-SPAN is the local TV news |
|
|
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
THE GREAT FLOOD Is irony dead again? At least for a little while? I'm not so sure. But let's consider:  And:  Am I the only one who actually misses the tedium of the antedeluvian late summer news cycle? I doubt it. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening going from bar to bar with the OC's Ian Spencer. Booze goes well with apocalypse. Ian's a die-hard Saints fan who has family in New Orleans. The last I heard his grandparents were still holed up in a downtown hotel. They stayed dry, but their homes are almost certainly not. Ian tells me most houses in the area are single-story. Thousands dead sounds disturbingly plausible, not to mention hundreds of miles of surrounding area. I think the front page editorial from today's Hotline brings it home for those of us whose biggest material problem is the after-effects of one Sam Adams too many: Anyone else get the feeling that we here in official Washington haven't quite grasped the seriousness of what's happening in LA and MS?Jeff Jarvis is the first person I know of to seriously pose the question: "Should New Orleans be rebuilt?" I think the can-do American thing to say is "yes." But we decline, it wouldn't be the first time we've given up on a city. I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk of Diamond City, North Carolina or Vanport, Oregon. We've given up before, although certainly not on this scale. I'm in the rebuild camp — as long as it's rebuilt smarter. I'll admit to having never given money to a charity before, but I used to be living paycheck to paycheck, plus my company will match my donation, dollar for dollar. Everyone who can give something should. Anything is better than nothing. UPDATE — I've changed my mind about the relevance of Vanport and Diamond City. Both are far too small to be meaningfully compared to New Orleans. Rather, as the Chicago Tribune points out, San Francisco was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake, and Chicago was rebuilt after that business with Mrs. O'Leary's cow. |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
— If this happened in Washington, you wouldn't be reading this. There would be no electricity; there would be no light; there would be no phones (even cell service would be nearly non-existent); your Blackberries would get no email; there'd be no subway; there'd be no newspaper delivered or available; you couldn't reach your friends; your office wouldn't exist or you couldn't get to it; your home would be gone; there'd be no schools to send your kids to; the graves of your family would be washed away; electrocuted family pets; snakes and other scary creatures everywere; and you'd have to move somewhere for at least 3 months. 
