I wish I could say that I took the last week off because Not-Blogging is the new black. I wish I had been merely running around to doctor's offices and clothing stores, preparing for Robert's first day of preschool.
But in reality, my wife and I have been transfixed by the gruesome deterioration of New Orleans into New Calcutta. The TV footage is grim. The talking heads are glib and over-earnest. Crackpots ponder whether God sent us Katrina to punish the city for its libertine ways, or to criticize the Jewish pullout from Gaza, or to cripple the American oil industry, or to protest the Britneyspawn.
And that cerebral stalwart Harry Connick Jr. says the violence, rape, starvation, and putrescence that have plagued the Superdome lately "can't be any worse than spending three hours ... watching some of those Saints games we've had in the past."
It's one-stop shopping for the full spectrum of human frailty: from the most weak (whose sickness or poverty trapped them in Katrina's path) to the most powerful (who finally decided to take notice on Day 5, after his poll numbers fell off the table).
It's all so painfully repellent, yet I can't look away.
