Revenge of the Doughy Pantload

I'm happy to announce that professional douchebag Jonah Goldberg has a new column out about Hurricane Rita. As usual, Jonah's writing displays all the wit and compassion of the ingredients label of a Metamucil bottle. Once again, the leading proponent of South Park Conservatives, a.k.a. "morons," tries to use a little tongue-in-cheek humor to make his point, but ends up with a foot in his mouth.

The press was blindsided again. As Hurricane Rita barreled toward Key West, television news executives were unprepared to deal with the lamentable divide this storm would undoubtedly reveal between gay America and straight America.

You'd think the media would have learned their lesson. After Katrina, the press corps waited a full two days after the storm hit before it was able to report that one of America's poorest and blackest cities was full of poor and black people. Surely, this time around the Fourth Estate would hit the ground running with up-to-the-minute exposes on the "Other" Other America and trenchant-yet-lachrymose essays on What This Says About America, that one of America's zestiest gay resorts was left to twist in the wind.

The questions raised by unlovely Rita are as painful as they are obvious. Will gays stay behind in disproportionate numbers in this disproportionately gay city? If so, Why? If gay marriage were legalized, could some of this disaster be avoided? Would George W. Bush have responded more quickly if the victims were just a tad less stylish? And, of course: Will the federal government help keep Key West festive?

Why weren't reporters standing at the ready to caterwaul about the wreckage at their feet? Cher albums and the collected writings of James Wolcott strewn about like beer cans and pizza boxes in an apartment yet to be transformed by the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

It's almost like he's trying to sound mentally retarded. Sorry, Jonah. That'll get you an Emmy or an Oscar, but it won't win you the Pulitzer.

I do appreciate the snarkiness coming out of the right wing over the government's craptacular hurricane response. They're revealing their sense of entitlement and worldview of class privilege more than anything we on the left could ever say. Poor Jonah must still wonder why all those people stranded in New Orleans didn't just take some of their trust fund money, hop in their SUVs, and drive off to the cushy job that Mommy got them.