August 30, 2007
Hi.
Hey, I has a blog. And it got date-raped by spam while I was on hiatus for whatever retarded reason.
Oh well. Suck on this in the meantime.
Source Quote: (Source)
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Every day, twice a day, the tourists come. They smile -- striking poses on the severed porch just yards from where Robert Green says Ditty died with his two kids strapped to his chest.
Seems that man thought he could save his babies from the 20-foot current that surged onto Tennessee Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, after a levee broke during Hurricane Katrina. But he couldn't.
Cleanup crews found the three mummified bodies months later. The folks whipping out cameras likely don't know about Ditty. But Robert Green does. It's his street. Ditty was his neighbor. It's part of his story.
Green stands on the curb in front of his FEMA trailer and watches the gawkers. They've paid $47 a pop to ride down the street where Green's mother and granddaughter died in the hurricane. Along with getting charged for a street light on his block, the tourists' antics are just one more thing to rub in just how far from normal his life is.
"They have video cameras, and the children get up there and play," Green said about his neighbor's porch with the mangled, wrought iron railing. "It's disrespectful to the person whose property this is, and it's disrespectful to the situation of what happened to us," said Green.
Fucking wonderful. Not only are tourists the epitome of everything that sucks about this country(usually doughy, pasty, slow, dumb white people with enough money to go places but not enough appreciation to immerse themselves in the experience), but the only conceivable reason I could see someone doing something like this is because they didn't perceive it as something that crippled our nation, but rather something that happened to people who were, like Wolf Blitzer so stupidly barfed on television "...so poor, and so black...".
It didn't provide an impetus for war, it wasn't exploited or even remotely framed as a national tragedy or used to spend political capital, and it didn't happen to white people - so in their minds it's okay for them to do this, because they didn't really suffer as a result of Katrina.
And I can probably point out the exact kind of people who would get a kick out of doing this - it'd be the same exact fucks who blamed the victims for not leaving, it'd be the same morons who wrote racist parody songs, and it'd be the assholes who traded in their white sheets for microphones and the undying support of tens of thousands of moronic hayseeds who love to feel superior to minorities, because it helps to shield the fact that it's okay for them to be stupid poor white trash as long as they're not of a different color.
Meanwhile, the displaced residents are coming back to see these fanny-packing dolts grinning from ear to ear, essentially tap-dancing on the remnants of what was once the center of their universe and their security zone, documenting their little shot at the poor black folk with bad photos from cheap disposable cameras - and we wonder why people are still pissed off and despondent.
Unfortunately, people like to pretend that a $1000 debit card from FEMA can replace your dignity or your sense of security, and anyone wanting any more than that is just another welfare case leeching off of society.
Nevermind the fact that these same people would be screeching with indignance if tourists amassed to take photos of Aunt Martha Ann and Uncle Jimmy, fat and flushed from a heaping breakfast at the Hometown Buffet at the nearby chain mall, as they smiled and wrapped their arms around each other's expanding waist amidst the rubble of the World Trade Center.
And people wonder why I'm so bitter.
Posted by Jake at August 30, 2007 09:28 PM
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