"Man... could I go for one a them big, JUICY burgers-- not them sissified big city burgers... no, the kind you have to hold like this... mmm... very big burgers..."

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Well, I guess we all have Hurricane Fever now!

The cable news networks have obviously decided that the hurricane is Mother Nature’s OJ trial; CNN is now called CNN Storm Central. President Bush, to his credit, has been belatedly coached on how a president is supposed to act when there is a hurricane, and he’s been moderately convincing in the role, if a bit forced. But then, this isn’t the Great Communicator we’re talking about, so let’s cut him some slack.

But doesn’t it seem like Hurricane Rita has given everyone some sort of cosmic do-over? Suddenly you see Louisiana politicians rattling off evacuation strategies as if they’d had them in place longer than a week. Every city on the Gulf has a plan, and the public officials who appear on the news are beautifully drilled in all the details and nuances.

We were treated to the spectacle of 2.7 million Houston residents leaving town, despite the fact that Houston is above sea level, 60 miles inland, and not in the storm’s direct path. The traffic jam eclipsed the hurricane as a disaster hitting Houston; “We’re in hour nine of the traffic jam, Wolf, and STILL, the government has provided neither water nor gasoline!” Indeed it actually seemed possible for a while there that the president would fly in to survey a TRAFFIC JAM.

No disrespect intended to the many who are suffering and who have lost loved ones. Indeed it is their suffering that seems to make this self-congratulatory over-compensation associated with the Rita response seem so tacky and manipulative. If Rita hadn’t hit on the heels of the Katrina devastation and subsequent fiasco, would almost 3 million people have gotten out of Houston? I doubt it.

Finally, I wish we’d sent our military over to southeast Asia when the tsunami hit in December. Because if only we’d fought the weather over There, we wouldn’t have had to fight it over Here.

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By the way, turns out the sea water from the tsunami was great fertilizer, and many of the lands hit in December are enjoying bumper crops as a result.

Labels: The politics