Bridges and floods

Outspoken New Orleans author Poppy Z. Brite posted these thoughts comparing reactions to the Minneapolis bridge collapse and the New Orleans flood on her online journal, Dispatches from Tanganyika.

"For the past few days, every time I've seen pictures of the collapsed I-35 bridge in Minneapolis or read interviews with the narrowly-escaped or families of the presumably lost, the same ugly thoughts have popped into my head: I wonder if anyone will talk about how stupid they were to trust that their federally built bridge would not collapse. I wonder if anyone will question whether their major route over the Mississippi River should be rebuilt. And the answers are obvious: no, of course not, nor should anyone say these things. Yet we in New Orleans had just as much right to expect that our federally built structures would stand, and to demand that the government make things right for us given that their work turned out to be incompetent. The fact that no one would even consider asking such things about a major American city like Minneapolis just slams home our banana-republic status a little further. We aren't treated like part of the U.S.; we aren't important except when people want a place to party. And it makes us bitter, so that we think about such things when we should be sympathizing with people who are dying and grieving."
- Poppy Z. Brite, Aug. 4, 2007

I keep waiting for some prominent wacko Christian preacher to suggest that the bridge collapse is divine punishment for Minneapolis' domestic partnership registration law.