Mea culpa, Jim

My fellow adoptive parent and PAKK friend Jim, was displeased by my post "The tragedy of too much warning;" he felt that my "comments about New Orleans people not rising to the challenge" required refutation, and added presciently, "I think more often then not, the media focused on the tragedy, and not the heroic efforts of people who were truly first responders."

Well, Jim, you have my official permission to call me a gullible moron. I don't suppose there's much particularly wrong with my logic, but boy, did I ever have my premises wrong: all the stuff I was trying to explain, turned out to be pretty much the figment of the highly irresponsible news media's fertile imagination. It's not just that the media focused on the tragedy: it's that great big chunks of the tragedy were made up out of whole cloth.

I also apologize to the citizens of New Orleans. Let's see, a group of people whom I already know to be liars, exaggerators and professional histrionists, make wild and lurid accusations about people about whom I know nothing at all. To whom should I give the benefit of the doubt? "The media" -- um, sorry, Peril, wrong answer. What happened to all my pious blatherings about how, "There's a critical rule in life: whenever somebody tells you something really bad about somebody else who isn't there, you always -- always -- assume that you don't yet know the whole story"? Oh, that's right, I had to delete the post in which I thusly pontificated...good thing, too, because if it were still on the blog people would be able to tell that I'm a hypocrite.

Jim, if we ever meet in person, I owe you a drink for being right. And I owe most of the people of New Orleans a drink for believing vicious slanders about them...though I don't think I'll buy 'em that drink because I don't know how they'd all manage to share it.