Saturday before last, I was sitting in my living room, checking email and watching TV because I have no social life to speak of. And I looked up from my computer to glimpse Lisa Ling introducing a National Geographic Explorer special called “Drowning New Orleans”. And outside I could hear thunder rumbling and I could see from my window that dark storm clouds were rolling in and the wind was picking up, which meant, of course, that there was a pretty good chance of losing power at any second, which always sets me a bit on edge and scares the crap out of my dogs (sometimes literally). So I changed the channel. I figure, I don’t need another skinnypretty newsbitch telling me about the damage New Orleans suffered, since I’m clearly living with it every goddamn day.
I picked up the remote and start flipping through the pre-sets My Gay Lover entered ages ago, and when I hit the Fine Living Channel (I did mention that my lover is gay, right?), the Goddess of Irony reared her curious head, for there before me was a shot of Baronne Street, at the corner of Julia, and the narrator of the program in progress was talking about the Materne’s and their dream of opening up a swanky new Vespa dealership in downtown New Orleans. And of course, I knew that the dealership opened after Katrina, so I thought, “Finally: a positive story about the perseverance of New Orleanians in the face of storm damage and federal neglect and a bald-ass do-nothing in city hall (the one building, FYI, I would’ve loved to see destroyed by the storm, but no dice).”
Then, during a break, they announced the next show that evening would feature Chris Isaak giving a guided tour of JazzFest. He was looking right at the camera, talking very earnestly about the importance of New Orleans and the will of its citizens to survive, and I thought, “Dammit, we should send the editorial staff of National Geographic a year’s supply of Prozac. Or pot. Yeah, pot for the tree-hugging hippies….”
Now, in the end, neither program was as satisfying as I wanted it to be. The post-Katrina summary in the Vespa story felt especially tacked-on: basically, while the end credits were rolling, the narrator said, “Oh, by the way, the dealership opened in New Orleans in March.”
Still, it was nice to see some positive news about New Orleans in the national media. I mean, I don’t know about the rest of you who live here, but from where I sit, things are picking up steam. I’m seeing renovations and repairs in almost every quarter of the city, I see more and more FEMA trailers parked outside homes, businesses are re-opening (including the home of the best ice cream anywhere in the known world). Stella and the rest of us are slowly getting our groove back. So why doesn’t the goddamn New York Times do something on that? Or CNN? I hate to agree with the Commander-in-Chief, but sometimes it seems like the media has an aversion to good news.
Andy Cooper: the ball’s in your court….
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