It is like a never-ending dirge; or some opportunistic occasion for every pundit, news director, ratings-starved TV news outlet, musician or spoken word artist to once again, weigh-in on an occasionally occurring natural phenomenon and resulting human tragedy.  Why don’t you really try to depress the masses! Between the oil story and “Katrina” ( again), a foreigner might think that the only “news’ in the U.S.A. comes from that area!

Ever since 2005 this time, we are now browbeaten with this Katrina stuff.  Enough already.  I actually think NBC anchor man Brian Williams must BE from there because he is  always  talking about New Orleans and “Katrina” as if it was the first-ever hurricane to decimate a part of this country – which it is not by the way.  Mr. William’s delivery is one of the most monotoned and depressing as a regular anchor man that I have ever heard by the way, and most of the time I ignore this and think of him as a News Jockey, just some glue in-between stories. Today I turned-off the nightly TV news early in the half-hour and every radio program that mentioned “Katrina” again…”Geez”  Enuff already!!

I remember hurricane Donna tracking up the east coast from waay out in the Atlantic and touching us all ashore back in 1960 when I was just a boy in New York City. Now  that  was a classic storm!  Our Queens neighborhood flooded big-time.  The avenues and side streets became rivers; basements deep water pools and garages awash.  The kids around the corner used the opportunity to take a swim and launch their parent’s boat that had only recently been taken in from the fishing docks near the Whitestone Bridge.  Good thing the news and perpetual repetition media was not so frenzied or afflicted with suspicious tunnel visioned reliving of the past like they are these days; there would have been no simplicity of people just cleaning-up and getting back to normal after the storm – but it would have been hilarious to see the reporters swimming down the street on black and white TV!   It is similar to people who cannot live without a phone to their ears for even a minute!

There will always be natural disasters.  Every September, are we constantly reminded of the Earthquake in San Francisco that occurred during the Giants/Oakland World Series?  No, and I actually remember that more than “Katrina”! Nashville just had an historic flood three months ago.  Is that event still all over the network nightly “world” news broadcasts? No.  So why do we constantly have to have “Katrina” rubbing our noses in misery of the past that only ONE state out of the whole fifty experienced dramatically?

 There are enough tragedies in every state to make up a news cast daily, I am sure.  A friend of mine suggested there is a  political  agenda afoot with all of this “Gulf of Louisiana” news now – they are a political “football”; I suggested there is also a racial scapegoating component, and am sure that there was enough loss, heartache and getting stranded on rooftops to go around, no matter what your ethnicity.  The news just chose to hype the Black American story for their ratings and race-baiting appetites.  By the way the Saints finally won in football, what more do they want?? LOL

As I seek to reinvent myself and chase the elusive amended career income and financial stability that I know I deserve, I do not want to hear, nor can I empathize with “Katrina” anymore; her day has come and gone, and I have more personal “fish” to fry ( maybe Cajun-style, even! LOL).