Current Affairs

Three weeks out from Katrina, it's clearer than ever that people at every level of government made a lot of mistakes, which had a multiplier effect. Those who just can't get past their own political prejudices to take an honest look at what happened will be increasingly irrelevant to the debate; they will add nothing helpful.

All of us in the news business -- especially those engaged in dead-tree journalism -- are trying to figure out how to engage those whippersnappers called "young people." This post gives a pretty good explanation of why that effort might be a little trickier than most of us want to believe. I know this makes me really sound like a fuddy-duddy dinosaur, but I continue to believe that journalism should strive to be what it always has been: a good story well-told.

This is talk like a pirate day. Yaarghh, matey -- ya must be the son of a biscuit-eatin' land-lubber if ya don' find this highly amusin'.

The News-Sentinel won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1982 flood. That's when a newspaper can really shine -- when disaster strikes, and people desperately need to know what's going on. Well, there was this tiny little diaster in New Orleans, and the New-Orlleans Times-Picayne has done heroic work in continuing to publish. It certainly deserves at least consideration for a Pulitzer. But the Pulitzer people have these rules, you know.

If your only Katrina goal is to find one more reason to disparage Bush's brain or to reflexively defend him no matter what, you probably won't like this article. But if, like most people, you're just trying to figure out what went wrong and what we can learn from it, you will find it thoughtful and insightful. Peggy Noonan batted about .500 as a presidential speech writer (she came up with "a thousand points of light" and the unlamented "read my lips -- no new taxes").

Robert Wise will be remembered mostly for "West Side Story" and "Sound of Music," two of the most successful movie musicals of all time. But I will always appreciate him for 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," still one of the best science fiction movies ever.

And here I thought Germany was such a happy-go-lucky, fun-loving country. Ve haf vays of making you frown!

Headline writers live for chances like this. Congress makes it so easy.

Politicians are among those expressing bewilderment that blacks and whites can look at exactly the same set of Katrina facts and come to such diametrically opposed opinions. Wonder how that puzzlement breaks down among Democrats and Republicans. Just asking.

If you don't mind the fact that we're going to have a de facto national ID card in the United States, then you probably aren't worried about the possiblity of getting a Citizens Service Number. Just think of all that stuff about you already in computers, waiting patiently to be gathered together and . . . sometimes it's easy to get paranoid.