Can It Be? The Sound of Scales Dropping

The press wakes up from its long slumber, breaking the reflexive habit of ass-kissing that has characterized its approach to those in power:

Later, Anderson Cooper was even harsher, challenging Sen. Mary Landrieu for thanking President Bush for his efforts to aid her state. "Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting," he said. "For the last four days I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi ... You know, I gotta tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians thanking one another, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now. Because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours and there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?"

I take no comfort in that, however. Because the truth is we all need to wake up--from our self-involvement, our neatly-constructed world view, the comfort of our moral stance that confirms how good we are. Because none of us is that good, and all the ideology in the world never kept a child alive anyway.

Before Katrina, we were warned of coffins floating out of cemeteries, but instead we got poor black people flushed out of slums, and to some people they're apparently just as scary. But they're not going back any time soon. They're our responsibility now. They always were; we just ignored it.