two scenes for the big easy

I’ve been feeling as though I ought to write something about New Orleans’ inundation, but I wasn’t quite sure what. What to say that hasn’t already been said by people with far wider readerships than me? This weekend’s crop of New York Times editorials, penned by a group never particularly fond of the president, were scathingly vituperous and even somewhat bewildered at the sheer indolence of the administration in facing the catastrophe. The punditocracy doesn’t know why Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, seemed so blitheringly incompetent and ill-informed at the first major test of his agency’s responsivity to crisis; neither do I. Few try to explain why Bush seemed first to studiously avoid the problem, and then, even when forced to Louisiana by the weight of public outcry, restricted his visit to grinning photo-ops and glib platitudes in such bad taste even Pat Robertson (he of the suggestion we assassinate the premier of Venezuela) would wonder how Dubya got his foot into his duodenum with such ease. An exemplary scene: the commander-in-chief, standing on a spic-and-span runway, about to flee the benighted city, commenting on the destruction of former Senate majority leader Trent Lott’s manse, noting that it would be rebuilt soon bigger and better. Rebuilt, of course, because the honorable gentleman from Mississippi has the kind of cash to do that. Once the screened porches were back up, Mr Bush averred, he would hie southward again, presumably with more alacrity than the brief trip into the anarchy now regnant.

Those who did not have Mr Lott’s resources were those who victim to drowning, rapine, or exposure largely because they lacked the means and were left adrift by a government in studied sloth. As one or another of those bilious columnists this weekend said, “the rich left the poor to die.” It doesn’t seem that far from the truth. The poor are, by virtue thereof, generally the last in the pecking order, but it seems depraved to abandon them to their deaths. Stockpiling stragglers in the Superdome and leaving them to stew in their own ordure is too great a degradation to expect of us. These travails, far from over, have brought bright light unto a lacuna of leadership staggering in its breadth and obliviousness.

Not to dwell on the negatives so long as the Bush-bashers, the response of the nation has been heartening. Before the hurricane hit, the umbrella group to which Fordham University belongs, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, was arranging for the transfer of all the students in Jesuit schools to sister institutions around the country. Fordham will be getting more than a few. Across the nation, almost every college and university has opened its doors to house and school its students until they can reopen (optimistically) in the Spring. Bureaucracies have been ignored and short-circuited, and the Louisianans are beginning classes along with everyone else, in some semblance of normalcy. This is truly a great achievement.

A scene from today: I am sitting in the back yard at the frat, the remnants of the annual Labor Day BBQ scattered around, sipping on the last of the beers and generally shooting the shit about baseball and the upcoming football season (our fantasy draft is this evening). A stranger wanders in; at first we think it’s a potential rush with a very bad sense of punctuality, but he quickly introduces himself as Shir, a visiting Zete. From where, we ask blithely. Beta Tau, he replies, and one can actually gauge the degree to which the lessons of yesteryear were internalized by the time it takes faces to sag momentarily. Beta Tau is our Tulane chapter. We press through the questions: are you alright; is everyone alright; what was it like? He seems casual. In the event, he originated in Boston, so when given the choice of institution at which to spend the indefinite future, he opted for Columbia. He isn’t so much visiting as moving into the house for the next four months... at least. So we have one more Zete in das Zëtehaus, one that seems like a chill and laid-back guy, with a distinct and yet wholly unstereotypical accent to remind us that he’s only sojourning here from the Big Easy.

I wonder for all those folks down N'Awlins way who aren’t being kindly shepherded by their almæ matræ into new environs, for those who don’t have a frathouse at whcih to ride out the winter in every city. I suspect there were children left behind. This is America. We must do better.