New Orleans

I'll entitle it this way, instead of "Katrina," though it's the hurricane, the slow response, the racism, etc. that are on my mind. I haven't yet heard Obama's speech on this, the 5th anniversary of landfall in southern Louisiana, but although a good bit of rebuilding has indeed taken place there, there's hardly enough been done for the poor. And we all know or should know why that is: racism and neglect for the working poor of all races is still pretty much the order of the day. We still could have an event occur in the wake of which people would say "I don't recognize my country! Is this really the U.S.? Why are people being forsaken?" Instead, we hear "tea baggers" who want their country back, by which they of course mean that they do not and will not accept a mixed race president.

chill, baby chill

That's what Bob Herbert suggests to Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the bigoted demagogues who stir the desperate uneducated masses in the last line of his editorial today, the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Right next to it is a wonderfully concise statement by Charles M. Blow whose best passage, in my view, is the parenthesis about the irony:

"ground zero" … Lincoln Memorial = sacred grounds

"ground zero" "mosque" = desecration, strident outcry

Beck's "Restoring Honor" speech = perfectly acceptable

tit for tat

If Muslims can't build a community center near "ground zero" (a designation that begs analysis if there ever was one), then Christians have no right to build a church or pray or congregate or ... within 50 feet of any United-Statesians with African slave ancestry. Why? Because if non-Muslims are associating all Muslims with the fanatic group from al-Qaeda that committed the crime of 9/11 then, logically, the sensitivities of Blacks and all who stand in solidarity with them should associate all of Christianity with the Ku Klux Klan and condemn it outright as well. CQFD. Or did I miss something?

Mosque fever

What's eating me today? The profound, rampant ignorance of people in this country. It's beyond hope. Ripe for fascism. The formula is there: economic stagnation, endemic bigotry, total lack of critical abilities.