We knew Scott Ott was brilliant, as his many parodies have so deftly illustrated. But this thoughtful and non-satirical post in response to an editor’s query about a Katrina parody is something everyone should read. Ott’s reply to the editor is a sensitive, thoughtful, and damning indictment of society, government, and the media. Here’s a sample:

The victims of Katrina are not really the victims of Katrina herself. The tragedy began long before the hurricane hit.

Natural disasters have always happened and always will. While, mercifully, they don’t occur every day in every place, they are common enough that we ought to have an expectation that bad things can and will happen. We need to cultivate the inner resources in ourselves, our children and our neighborhoods to cope with the inevitable. When we cede that power and responsibility to the federal government, we surrender a part of what makes us human and leave ourselves more vulnerable to the tempest.

I can’t agree with the editor’s statement that Katrina survivors are heroes, simply by virtue of having survived a natural disaster. I think Ott’s response to her was very restrained. Many people did perform many acts of heroism during and after the storm. But I really do believe that those who stayed when they could have left, including some dear friends, were idiots, not heroes. I understand that not everyone had the capability to evacuate for various reasons, and I’m not talking about those folks. I’m talking about those who chose to “ride it out” out of some sense of personal invincibility or magical thinking. Those people were a burden that others had to carry, and I can’t call them heroes. Precious resources were spent rescuing people who could have evacuated, and others suffered because of it. And the others, who had to stay because they lacked options, are not heroes. They were victims of a natural disaster. Nothing more. To call both of these groups of people heroes cheapens the word.

A Hat tip goes to the Anchoress for this story, in a post which also includes info on the real chill wind that could silence free speech, as opposed to gasbag Tim Robbins’ chill wind.

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The Orleans Levee Board is officially dismantled. Positions on the Levee Board never required any expertise or knowledge, just an “in” with the Governor or some other politician. Their mission statement was -

The Orleans Levee District is dedicated to protecting the lives and property of the citizens of Orleans Parish by constructing, operating and maintaining the Mississippi River and Hurricane Protection Flood Control Systems and to providing safe and secure facilities for aviation, marine and recreational activities.

but they did practically nothing related to the first half of that statement. Their time was almost exclusively dedicated to “providing safe and secure facilities for aviation, marine and recreational activities” and managing their extensive list of rental properties.

After Katrina, I took the time to read and summarize their meeting minutes for the year leading up to Katrina. They didn’t just take the time to manage their rental properties. They also attempted to manage their tenant’s activities. When discussing renting a property to a pharmacist, Commissioner Green worried, “what is occurring in New Orleans East with a few places that call themselves pharmacies. … a few places that opened as pharmacies and now have turned into dispensaries for pain killer medication’s, etc. On a day to day basis, it will be up to staff and Mr. Pappalardo to make sure that sort of thing does not happen here.” It’s a good thing there were no pressing issues with the levees, like the seepage at the base of a levee for a year prior to Katrina right where it broke at the 17th Street Canal, to worry about.

Voters insisted on a consolidation of all the local levee boards into two “superboards” – one for the East Bank, and one for the West Bank. In a final bit of irony, in the Board’s meeting room where the official motion was approved to dismantle the Board so the new “superboards” can take over -

On one wall of the meeting room hung a series of plaques that the Army Corps of Engineers had awarded the Orleans Levee Board almost every year since 1984 for its “outstanding” performance in maintaining the city’s levees and participating in the area’s flood-control program.

The Corps was finally forced to admit that they flooded New Orleans, not Katrina. But the Orleans Levee Board was certainly an accessory to that crime.