This is a true story.
A week ago, my roommate decided it was time she did her part to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. She went down to the Red Cross and signed up. They assigned her to take several classes on what she would need to know while she was there. Dutifully, she attended all of them, filled out the necessary paperwork, talked to all of the required people and gave them the date she was hoping to ship out.
Finally, a woman met with her to go through a series of questions about her impending service. She asked the last of them, looked up and said, "Okay, you're done here. Don't call us; we'll call you."
My roommate, surprised and affronted, asked, "Well, when will I know if I can leave on the day I asked for? I have to make reservations, get plane tickets ..."
"Don't know," the woman said. "We'll call you."
Today is the day she had wanted to leave.
As of Saturday, she had not been called.Am I misunderstanding this? Is the organization that is most needed in the disaster area also the least interested in doing anything? Is this an isolated incident, or is everyone in the Red Cross this disinterested?
Wasn't there a time, once, when tragedy galvanized the country? Didn't we once rush eagerly to help and assist our fellow humans, doing all that was within our power and more than was required of us? Didn't at least some of us do that?
This is not to say no one is rushing to help the people struck by this natural disaster. If no one is helping at all, then the country is completely dead - rather than just apathetic and bored - and things haven't gotten that bad. Yet.
Yes, I say bored. As in, no longer interested enough to really care. During the first week of Katrina's aftermath, everyone was fascinated. There were stories of catastrophic death tolls, of bodies lying in the streets, of people packed into spaces too small for them, raping and killing each other, dying of 100 different diseases, and of old men and women left to drown in a nursing home. Death. Violence.
There were also stories of government brutality, repression and unfair imprisonment to attract us. A veritable carnival of horrors marched past our eyes, keeping us riveted, keeping us tuning in day after day. News item one was always the aftermath of Katrina and the city that had become a fairly decent picture of Hell.
But they say you can get used to anything, and we did.
New Orleans is old news.
Unlike the events of Sept. 11, this disaster didn't leave us with anyone to hate. The key to keeping people interested is giving them someone they want to punch, and the only possible candidate in this case - our president - is already pretty well set as far as who wants to deck him.
We don't have anyone to hate, only people to feel bad for, and we can only sympathize for so long before we get bored.
Now, there's just the messy job of holding someone, somewhere, accountable.
Or maybe not. As the event fades from our collective minds, maybe the people who allowed a natural disaster to become a slaughter will simply slink away and go about their business. It's an age-old practice: Pass the blame, muddle the truth, pay off the right people and wait for everyone to forget about it.
It's none of OUR business, right?
Write to Jonathan at
tenement_cellar@msn.com
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