Looking Back On the Night That the Easy Went Under

     Where were you the night Katrina destroyed New Orleans?
     Oh, what a night...
     A week later, most of the city was still underwater, with hundreds or thousands of folks presumed dead, and tens of thousands of others left homeless.
     It looked like Zork the Galactic Destroyer had come in and pissed all over the landscape.
     Meanwhile, Bush went on TV and hopped around with his foot in his mouth, trying to spit out his old, crusty socks. He actually said that nobody knew that those levies would break...
     We all rolled around on the floor after that one. My four-year-old nephew knew that those levies were toast back in 2003.
     Millions signed a petition that told Bush, get off the crack.
     A vision: Bush being taken in chains from city to city and stoned by large crowds, then being drowned in a bathtub on prime time TV.
     And then as the bubbles rise, block parties all over the nation!
     In order to show that he cares about black folks by proxy, Bush sent Condi Rice to Biloxi, where Katrina had also blown through. The folks there had nothing, no water, no shelter, no food--FEMA, the federal disaster relief org was nowhere, of course--and so Condi told them, "Hey, folks, just pray to Jesus!" She then hopped a plane and bopped back to Manhatten to finish her shoe-shopping spree.
     She must have figured that Jesus would bring in the food and the aid trucks.
     He'd've probably gotten there quicker than FEMA. Turns out its budget for coping with this came to thirty-five bucks. Bush sucked it dry to pay for those cost overruns that Cheney's old outfit ran up in Iraq; you know, sixty-three billion for pup tents and that shit.
     FEMA's deliveries to hurricane victims: thirty-six pairs of mismatched galoshes, bibilical tracts, and three cans of Alpo.
     It got even better! George Will, the gentleman nazi they let have a newspaper column, who uses big words that are mostly just dribble and spit, weighed in with a screed that exhorted readers not to lay blame on George Bush or the feds. See, it was black people's fault that so many just up and drowned.
     The deal was, they all fucked like rabbits and had all those kids without being married, and that's why they're poor and that's why they drowned.
     Well, hell yeah! Of course! Trust Will to nail it! And those fucking liberals--all that shit about gun-happy cops, public schools in the toilet, no jobs whatever, and services gutted to ease up the tax load for pustoads with money, plus all of the rest of the shit that they've dumped on poor black folks in ghettos forever--those commies can stick that shit right up their ass!
     "Hey, George!" Will wound up, "the fact that you slashed FEMA's budget to nothing to pay for the war, and then put old what's-his-name, Wilbur, the horse guy in charge of the shop, and then shoved it down in Homeland Security's basement, thereby ensuring the Easy'd stay under for days, with no medicine, water, shelter, or food, and no way out of town for the poor folks--big fucking deal! Don't sweat it! Yeah, some people are pissed but, hey, look. Tell 'em you'll fix things and all that good shit, then send Cheney's old outfit Rip 'Em And Clip 'Em to suck off more profit, just like they're doing in Iraq as we speak and, well, hell... Give it a minute so things can cool down, all that blame shit and so forth, and then we shall see. Slap a fresh coat of paint on old Bourbon Street there, and don't let the poor folks come back, and who knows? They might get things running again!
     "How does this sound? The Big Easy Theme Park! Las Vegas South! There are plenty of guys that you and I know who'd love to get in on the ground floor of something like that! Hell, get things all fixed, and then maybe ship in some Black kids to tapdance for quarters in front of casinos...you know, make it cultural or something...
     "As long as you don't raise our taxes--and we know you won't--and hey, it's partytime, right? I mean, what the hell, you've already sent in the clowns!"
     Will did his best, but after Katrina, Bush's poll numbers sank to their lowest point ever, down there with rats chewing babies and genital lesions that drip in the night. Much more of this kind of shit and crowds in the millions would blast through the White House with torches and pitchforks and castrating shears.
     And then, to top this all off, Osama bin Laden came out with one of his vids. Turns out, the guy had been in the Easy the same night Katrina blew through. And here he was now, at a Starbuck's somewhere, sipping a milkshake, tanned and relaxed, with a grin on his face.
     "Hey, homos!" he said. "I was there when that bitch tore the roof off the sucker! Wow, man, kafwooooooooosh! Like Shaitan's bad breath, and then after, he spits on your ass! Next thing you know, you want to go to the bathroom or something, you've got to swim there, no shit! Those levies, man, I swear to God... Hey, George, what did you guys stick them together with? Chewed bread and old rubber bands? I mean, I was on Bourbon Street there, and all of a sudden the whole fucking place was a pigsty Atlantis! Good thing the street was still above water. I made a call to some of my guys and they came and got me but, wow! I could've been swimming with fishes, you know?"
     Osama laughed. "Was that the game plan, my man? Rustle up some hurricane weather, sweep me out to sea, and that's one for the good guys or something? To stop all the jib-jab from skeptics who think you're letting me run loose?" He grinned and winked. "Nah, that ain't it. We both know better than that, am I right? I mean, who'll scare the flagwaving grandmas and them when I'm gone?
     "What the thing really was, man, you're a dipshit! Hurricane comes, you're sucking on rugs, trying to hork up that last piece of rock, and the whole fucking place goes to hell. What was Katrina, a four-star blowout or something? Last year in Cuba they had a five-star, you know?
     "That means the wind's blowing harder!" Osama's grin had turned mean. "Went right through Havana like shit through a goose. Except, old Fidel, he had those people prepared."
     All of a sudden Osama wasn't grinning at all. "They got those people out of the way. Hurricane blows through, they come back and clean up, life goes on. Eleven folks dead. New Orleans, shit--what was the total? A thousand? Four million? Who knows? You sure the fuck don't! And you know what gets me? Those fucking Cubans are commies!"
     Osama's face morphed straight to rage. "I hate those infidel pricks! So, what the fuck happened? You lost the cold war? Then what the fuck was I doing back there in Afghanistan, man, putting the boots to the Russians and all that good shit? The commies went and slam-dunked your ass on this one, my man. And then, they offered to send in some doctors and shit, you know, to help out! So, Third World country--that must be you, am I right? What the fuck do you do with the money you steal, for Chrissake?
     "Anyway, I've gotta go. George, you are lame. Peace to my brothers and all the lovely, wonderful ladies in dreamland."
     Osama sipped the last of his milkshake and split.
     George Bush and Katrina.
     The bitch really blew out his lights...