September 26, 2005
The Lack of Calm Before
The Lack of Calm Before the Storm
The sentient among us must realize that a hurricane called Rita has recently caused a great calamity in the Gulf Coast. A few short days ago, a humble correspondent from our Corpus Christi (TX) desk—let’s just call him “Chip”—reported on the pre-hurricane comings and goings in the area.Soon before the storm actually hit, “Chip” dutifully sent in another report. This time, “Chip” focused on the hubbub directly before the big storm battered the coast. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” found this report sufficiently interesting, and thus we have pasted it below.
A Report on the Essential Goodness of Humanity
CORPUS CHRISTI, TX—As Rita makes its way closer to land, citizens in this God-forsaken hellhole must already endure a good deal of hot wind. Well, citizens with a television, that is.
As always seems to be the case, local news reporters—heavy with makeup and hair tonic—attempt to make their big splash (so to speak) by offering histrionic discussions of the storm-to-come. Accordingly, the unsuspecting viewer intent on finding out a few more details about the storm is compelled to endure the dimwitted blather of sundry anchors and anchoresses.
Naturally, these moronic windbags are full of hot air. They pontificate about the essential capriciousness and mercurial character of hurricanes, as if this were some unknown and deeply secret fact. So, it is tough to track a hurricane precisely? Gee, thanks for telling us, you chucklehead. We had no idea.
As if the local news weren’t irksome enough, there’s always the buildup to the storm itself. Nothing brings out the essential goodness of humanity like a natural disaster. Hawking gas informally for $20 a gallon, cutting in line, knocking over the elderly—human beings do it all.
In fact, perhaps it would be great to gather up the editorial staff of The Nation, New Left Review, International Socialist Review, Social Text, and all the other socialist rags, and put them in the path of the hurricane right before it hits. That way, they’ll get a great sense of the uprightness that is humanity.
If that doesn’t make them realize that man is not in fact perfectible, nothing will.
