originally written in 2005

What's wrong with America that we turn almost immediately to see how our celebrities are going to respond to anything that happens regarding our country, and they are revered for throwing these damn concerts??

Here's merely one opinion. There's nothing wrong with America. It's just the political system that's utterly broken. We have not been asked to sacrifice anything for so long by our politicians. They claim they don't WANT our taxes (well, of the super-rich, anyway). They don't WANT "big government." They only thing they ask is that the "private sector" contribute to, yep, "private" charities. They have absolutely abandoned the leadership role that government must take in times of crisis.

In the meanwhile, celebrity has become commodified, and since there are no leaders in the spotlight, celebrities have stepped in. And since this is a consumer society (remember when we were told to go shopping after 9/11), even charity is reduced to an exchange: I'll entertain you, if you do the right thing.

If Katrina had occured September 10, 2001, the muddled incompetent response would have been perhaps understandable.

But now? After anthrax; after serious concerns about "dirty bombs," containers carrying explosives or biological agents; after Madrid, and London, and Sharm el Sheik?

New Orleans was hit by a dirty bomb. It was a dirty bomb fueled not by fissile material, but by climate change (and ongoing long-term loss of wetlands).

The rest of the coast was hit by a tsunami: not literally, but that was the effect.

So there are two immense disasters in the homeland. But the homeland guard is overseas, in a situation that their military and political masters have mishandled as cluelessly as they have the situation here and now.

Our classified spy satellites are being focused on the Gulf of Mexico instead of the other Gulf, to aid in rescue. One of the people who run that program said the images indicate that the effects were worse than the effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

I don't know if that is true, but, goddam it, wouldn't a "reality-based" government announce that fact, if it's true? It would take some onus off the poor initial response. Instead, they lie, and lie, and smile, and blame everybody else save themselves.

They knew this hurricane was coming. They did nothing. They knew the levees would give way. They took away the funding. They ran an exercise last year, I believe, of a flooded NO. They knew from that exercise that 30% of the city's population could/would not evacuate even under a mandatory evacuation order.

Why didn't NO have publicized plans to use the overpasses that would be above the highest waters as staging/rescue/evacuation sites?

How are the surviving families going to be reunited? Who is going to pay for all the medical care they require, given our lack of a national medical scheme? What plans (ha!) are in place for the NEXT hurricane to come into the Gulf, and the next?

How many people who have still not been located, out in the back of beyond, will die before water and food and medicine is gotten to them?

For a long time after the World Trade Center collapsed, I would wake up and cry. Now, I wake up and am ashamed, and enraged.

"They're tryin' to wash us away .... "

"Goodnight, America, how are you? Don't ya know me, I'm your native son? On the train they call the City of New Orleans. I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done."

Week in review

Martha Graham at the Joyce (OK, it was last week) was unidiomatic and rather sad. To the point that most reviewers noticed. When Graham dancers seem to be auditioning for ABT, or actually dancing Corsaire, you know something essential has been mislaid.

Fall for Dance at City Center on Thursday was terrific.

• Taylor's Arden Court reminded what Mark Morris has gotten from Taylor: the tight interweaving of music and movement, a certain dispassionate stance of the choreographer. Lovely stuff.

• I would be happy to see Ratmansky's Middle Duet again and again, especially if danced (again and again) by Ekaterina Kondaurova and Islom Baimuradov. We were sitting in the GT, so we saw the projected squares of light (a prison cell?) that the dancers movements were confined in during the first part of the work. The music is ... ominous tango? totalitarian tanz? And Ratmansky's response to it is perfect. And Kondaurova, tall, lanky, with glorious feet (a rarity in St. Pete recently) dances and acts out the unspecified but enveloping drama. X says NYCB has this work (from 1998!) in its rep, but in a version with more dancers, and nowhere as strong. Thank you, City Center, for showing us the Real Thing.

• After the intermission, Shantala Shvalingappa danced "Varnam," an excerpt from GAMAKA, choreographed by this dancer and actress who looks a bit like Callas. I wish there had been a libretto or surtitles of the lyric of the live accompaniment. She was clearly telling us a story, but it was like watching an unfamiliar opera in an unrecognizable language: you only wish you understood some more of what you were watching.

• The last item was Deuce Coupe by the Juilliard company. I still can't decide what I think of Twyla's work. It was the only work of the evening in which the tight and unironic connection between the choreographer and the music was broken. One feels that Twyla gets ideas and then rummages for the soundtrack on which to play those ideas out. Dunno.

Friday attended a 7 pm dress of Nozze. The first cast Suzanna was indisposed, but the (?) cover was excellent and no, I didn't catch her name. The Figaro of Erwin Schrott was italiente, big round voice, nice piano, good actor, but sometimes losing the conductor or about to fall off the cliff vocally. The Cherubino was fine but ... Flicka she wasn't. Things went well or well-ish until the Countess flounced in, from another century and another repertoire. Hei-Kyung Hong could do Verdi, but yikes she was wrong for this piece and this ensemble and this production. Her acting was coarse. The finale of act 2 was a shambles. I was surprised the conductor, Philippe Jordan, didn't call for a redo. Reader, we left at intermission.

The ritual cleansing of 1120 Fifth

The WASP political equivalent of a mikvah will occur today, when Bill Clinton visits the penthouse of 1120 Fifth, three days after George W. Bush collected $1 million for the RNC at a get-together in 4A. Karma, baby.