they’re trying to wash us away

One year after Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, and things are still a mess. Bush the Lesser made a photo-op trip to a carefully selected red state enclave in Mississippi to proclaim that things have improved since he was there last. (“What, fewer minorities and poor people living there?” my wife acidly responded to his assertion.) Of course, when the situation last year featured the inundation of a major urban core and dead bodies floating in the streets, there’s no place to go but up.

My sister-in-law was in New Orleans a few weeks ago for a librarians’ conference, and reported back about a city where upscale eateries and merchants are doing business like gangbusters, while lower end business remain boarded up. (It sounded like a mirror universe Flint, Michigan.) Already the speculators have descended on the half-abandoned city, raking in the big bucks buying flood damaged houses from desperate owners for a song, then “flipping” them for a hefty profit. Meanwhile, poorer homeowners are being squeezed between government assistance that has been glacial in coming and local ordinances requiring them to take rapid action or face demolition or seizure of their property.

Don’t worry, Bush has already announced a plan for recovery involving tax breaks for corporations. Surprise, surprise. We can look forward to one of America’s most colorful and storied cities, a polyglot freebooter’s paradise that figures heavily in our national mythology, turn into a gentrified theme-park facsimile of its former self. Are you ready for animatronic Mardi Gras?