Tomorrow is the “big day”
depending of course on how you view the re-opening of the SuperDome in New Orleans.
If you listen to the blatherskite on the sports channels and the sports portion of your local evening newscasts, local or national, the 25th of September is notable for one reason and one reason only: the NFL will play football in the SuperDome on that night.
If you listen to the hot air issuing from the vicinity of the mouths of New Orleans’ Mayor Ray Nagin (he of the infamous “chocolate city” remarks, in case you’ve forgotten) and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the $9.3 million dollars spent to repair the SuperDome is extremely important for the city and state - far more so than spending that money on any attempt to help the tens of thousands of people who still cannot return to the Hurricane-Katrina-destroyed portions of the Louisiana coast and the city of New Orleans.
Combined with FEMA’s abysmal track record of response in Katrina’s aftermath, and the failure of either FEMA or the Federal Government to expedite payments to and repatriation of those displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the spending of money in this amount to repair a sports arena is unconscionable.
It seems to me that the agencies involved here are a lot more worried about prima donna football players and their unmentionably huge contracts than they are about the real people who are still waiting for these governmental agencies to get their ducks in a row.
Then again, a squeaky-clean SuperDome full of football players is a whole lot more attractive to the agencies in question than figuring out how to haul the mud, muck, and trash out of the lower 9th Ward for instance….
