Friday, January 06, 2006

The Rain, The Park and Other Things

Am in New York City today on bidness, stealing a moment from what bids fair to be a remarkably tedious day. On the shuttle on the way up, an item in the morning Post was more than a trifle horrifying. A body found at the Chartres Street Wharf has been identified as that of Barry Cowsill, of the '60s bubblegum group The Cowsills. He'd been missing since Katrina.

This is depressing on two counts. First, well, hell, it's the bass player for The Cowsills. I mean, come on, the "real" Danny Partridge.

But much more importantly, they're still finding bodies. Four-months-plus, and they haven't even found all the dead. Not to crow -- absolutely not to crow -- but the utterly unforgiveable delay in the cleanup of NOLA and the dreadful surprises still coming to light were foreseeable even in late August. The Rude Pundit's been doing first-person photo-reporting from New Orleans that absolutely must not be missed:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Oddly, you don't see many photos like The Rude One's in the Washington Post. If Chevy Chase looked like the Ninth Ward, I imagine you might.

Oh, and the discovery of Cowsill's body is on page C3 in the Style section. Below the Nude Chefs Calendar and Doonesbury. Yeah, we've got our priorities straight.

6 comments:

XTCfan said...

From Ms. Joni Mitchell, circa 1985, the song Dog Eat Dog (from the album of the same name):

Land of snap decisions
Land of short attention spans
Nothing is savored
Long enough to really understand
In every culture in decline
The watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that's genuine will be
Scorned and conned and cast away


New Orleans? That's so last summer, Ned. Peh.

(On a serious note, a friend of mine just got back from visiting family in the NO area, and -- now that I've seen the Rude Pundit's images -- precisely described the devastation down there. It's unbelievable that this country has such a short attention span that it is not holding its leaders accountable for this utter failure to take care of its citizens (I almost wrote "their own," but realized that this, in relationship to the word "leaders," would mean something entirely different).


It's a total irrtzyon

Anonymous said...

Jeddie: The Part 4 link is broken or gone - or something! fyi.

xtcfan: great lyrics.

Neddie said...

Fixed, thanks GlueBirl.

helmut said...

Maybe Barry Cowsill was found dressed to the nines?

julia said...

afreakingHem you are excuse me WHERE?

And you didn't LET ME KNOW?

Gr.

Kevin Wolf said...

Thanks for the links. Wasn't aware of this series.

Everything's okay, though, because Bush went on telly back when and pledged that NO would get all the help and money they need. So that was pledged. It's in there, a pledge of some kind I think. So that pledge took care of everything.

xsisl - Ish Kabbible's sister