Blackmoor Vituperative

In the last few days, we’ve been treated to some pretty disgusting defenses of the looting in New Orleans. Pundit after pundit has said that black people are being portrayed as criminals and looters. That’s fatuous and offensive. Criminals and looters have been portrayed as criminals and looters, and victims have been protrayed as victims. Most of them, predators and victims alike, happen to be black simply because of the demographics of the stricken area. I wish people would stop defending scumbags just because their ancestors happen to have come from a particular spot on the planet. That’s despicable. Some of the people taking food from grocery stores and so forth were doing what was necessary to survive: I have absolutely no problems with that. No sane person would. I’d be right there doing the same thing, if it were me and my family. What I have a problem with is soulless dirtbags like this preying on people who can’t defend themselves, stealing food and supplies from people who are just as much in need as themselves, if not more so.

Managers at the Covenant Home nursing center were prepared to cope with power outages and supply shortages following Hurricane Katrina. They weren’t ready for looters.

The nursing home lost its bus after the driver surrendered it to carjackers. Groups of people then drove by the center, shouting to residents, “Get out!”

On Wednesday, 80 residents, most of them in wheelchairs, were evacuated to other nursing homes in the state.

“We had excellent plans. We had enough food for 10 days,” said Peggy Hoffman, the home’s executive director. “Now we’ll have to equip our department heads with guns and teach them how to shoot.”

(from Yahoo! News, New Orleans Cops Ordered Back To Streets

Personally, I would have no problem if the National Guard had been given the order to shoot scumbags stealing supplies from a nursing home, regardless of where their ancestors came from — because that’s irrelevant. This is the USA: you are responsible for your own actions. Your ancestry provides you neither privilege nor excuses.

I am also tired of ignoramuses like Bill Maher and George Carlin banging their “blame Bush” drum over and over. Did Bush and FEMA and the rest of the federal peanut gallery screw up? Obviously. But so did the governors of Mississippi and Louisiana, and so did the mayor of New Orleans. They all screwed up. Using this tragedy to ride a partisan hobby horse is just contemptible. Contemptible.