my first newpaper article

(this is my first newpaper article that i wrote for the santa monica corsair. Hopefully, they will publish it)


We here at the Corsair have a hypothetical question.

As everyone should know by now, Los Angeles rests near the ocean. The ocean produces waves. Sometimes these waves are big. REALLY big! So imagine if, on one bright unsuspecting day, some REALLY big waves washed over the city of Los Angeles, swallowing this place whole and turning our grand old city into a real life Waterworld. Our question here at the Santa Monica Corsair is: what would Kevin Costner do?

No really, what we want to know is, how would FEMA and the world respond? Being that we all saw what happened in New Orleans, and it sure wasn't pretty.

People accused FEMA and the Bush administration of slacking off in New Orleans because, in the words of Kanye West, "George Bush doesn't like black people". Wait just a second there Kanye, you don't know that for sure. George Bush is a good man, cough. A colorblind man, cough, cough. I'm sure he loves every race equally, cough, cough, cough- wait my spleen just popped out.

But I'd like to debunk this whole "racial" thing right now. While race may have played a factor in New Orleans, it seems social status was the bigger issue. Because after all, if it were a bunch of proverbial Caucasian “honkies” rowing around in dilapidated canoes, we wouldn’t have exactly sprinted to the scene. More like taken a nice, brisk jog.

On a side note however, the biggest issue turns out to be the apathy of George Bush and Micheal Brown, who were reportedly engaged in a passionate game of online Connect Four during the hurricane's most crucial hours. Bush lost, claiming later in his defense that, "I'm colorblind, and I didn't know those were four black ones."

As many of you already know, a large portion of Katrina victims were underprivileged, and as I stated before, people don't exactly jump off their couches to go help the underprivileged. Especially over-privileged people with that names rhyme with mush. And even if they do get off the couch, they do it as reluctantly as possible, by gradually leaning their body weight forward until they either collapse in a jello-like heap to the floor, or successfully stand using both legs. Many never reach the bipedal stage, if you catch my metaphor.

So with human nature in mind, I think its reasonable to assume that social status did indeed play a role in the Katrina response effort. Because let's face it, gerbils are cute. Wait, wrong argument. Let's face it America, we're constantly placing "value" judgments on human life based on silly things, arbitrary things, and social status is just one of those things, right alongside which D class celebrity does the best tango, and people who sort of resemble Gary Busey.

So, what have we learned so far? We've learned that I've taken the liberty to completely ignore my initial question because I'd rather make fun of Bush instead. But hey, that's my journey, right?

But if there's one point I'd like to make, it's that America, FEMA, and the Caucasian powers that be would react quite differently to a Katrina sized disaster if one ever struck LA. Because we have movie stars. Including the cast of the OC.

And we'd watch as helpless people stood atop their million dollar mansions waving for help, and we'd scream, "Oh my gosh! Those poor, poor people! Imagine their upholstry! Those poor, poor people and their poor, damaged upholstery! Wait a second, isn't that Adrian Brody from the OC?"

The horror. It would be a disaster of unparalleled proportions.