NEW ORLEANS -- The house, located in the forgotten lower Ninth Ward, is a pile of splintered rubble. It is like many houses here, tossed about an area still in shambles, a symbol of our national shame.
You hear how New Orleans is coming back, that the recovery is progressing, then you come here, to the mostly black neighborhoods, and you see it is a lie, and our shame.
|
|
| The U.S. Army National Guard has been patrolling New Orleans trying to keep the peace. (AP) |
When part of an American city -- in these times of the mega-rich, where wealth spills onto the streets by the c-note -- looks like the surface of the moon all this time after Katrina, something is wrong. You want to say the Ninth Ward looks like bombed out Iraq, but Iraq is being rebuilt with more rapidity. Saying the Ninth Ward looks like Iraq is an insult to Iraq.
In fact a columnist for a weekly newspaper here asked the question: "... are you safer in the streets of New Orleans or Iraq?"
So much destruction remains, and so little has been done to fix it. If you drive through some neighborhoods, and you are not a robot drained of human emotion, you become incredibly angry. You want to strangle someone. When you see stories on the news about a landfill that could become stuffed with so much Katrina-related garbage it might be stacked 10 stories high, you wonder where the help is.
It's not just that society has forgotten about many of the poorer people here because they are black. It sometimes seems our society doesn't care about anything any more. Except maybe gas prices and porn.
New Orleans and Katrina show we have become desensitized to suffering.
At one point, I get lost, and feel like a fool asking for directions. People who live here must get irritated with tourist media dopes like me, who drive around wide eyed, like we're at Disneyworld, on the great Katrina ride. I can see some media dolt asking a resident: "Excuse me, can you point out the really dilapidated neighborhoods destroyed by the floods so I can get some good shots? Oh, and can I use your bathroom? Sorry. Forgot. You don't have a house."
The downtown area, in the blocks around the Superdome, fares better, but the damage is still evident. One of the strapping skyscrapers next to the dome still has dozens of unfixed shattered windows plastered across its front.
In the narrow downtown streets one half-mile north of the dome, there is still some graffiti on the walls referring to the president's genitals or the excellence of FEMA. There are still boarded up buildings.
The National Guard remains here. Two soldiers, carrying side arms neatly secured on their hips, temporarily cease their foot patrol and start chatting. "Just making sure you're OK," one of the soldiers said. He was courteous and professional but it's still somewhat shocking the Army is around.
It is of course a good thing the NFL is back in New Orleans. Not just because football is here again.
But also maybe, just maybe, the big-shot network broadcasting the game will do more than talk about Reggie Bush's sexy gams or show gratuitous closeups of giggling cheerleaders whose chests look like two puppies trapped under a sweater.
Maybe during the broadcast they will talk about the unglamorous, the real people, the forgotten people.
The people who could not make the big game or even watch it because their homes were taken by the storm. The people that continue to be hurt by an impotent government.
Maybe we will be reminded of America's continuing national shame, and the outrage will spread beyond the Ninth Ward.
