It’s not the first time such an outstandingly bassackwards resolution has been proposed in a state senate meeting, and I strongly suspect it will not be the last. But there is a little extra sting to Representative John LaBruzzo’s most recent brainchild, which could be generously described as dumbfuckery gone south. LaBruzzo, who represents a Metairie district in the Louisiana state legislature, has officially proposed that the state spend its residents’ hard-earned tax dollars by “voluntarily” sterilizing women who don’t meet his financial standards - while simultaneously “encouraging” wealthy women to have more children - as a means to improve the state’s economy. Seriously.

Now, the asininity (it’s a word, I looked it up) of this proposal should be shockingly obvious to our fair readers, but I’ve got insomnia so just for shits and giggles I’m gonna go ahead and point it all out anyway. Let’s start with the fact that LaBruzzo touts this proposal as a way of “addressing the problem of intergenerational welfare,” which one can only assume means that he thinks “welfare” is the economic quandary at fault for low wages and joblessness in Louisiana (those pesky hurricanes and Wall Street aside). First, there’s no such thing as “welfare” any more, so one can only hope LaBruzzo is using the inadequate term to refer to the replacement program TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), which provides - read my lips here - TEMPORARY financial assistance to some families (children are a requirement, adults without children do not qualify ) whose income falls below the poverty level. In other words, the majority of people who benefit from the TANF system are children whose parents DO work (another requirement) but whose wages are too low to raise the family above poverty. And they can only receive benefits for a maximum of five (that’s 5, or V if you’re an ancient Roman) years total. They can thank Bill Clinton, who I firmly support as our best Republican president ever, for that time limit. So that pretty much shatters the myth of “intergenerational welfare,” because this country will be goddamned if more than one percent (that’s 1%) of the entire federal budget is spent on assistance to these families. Truth.

But why stop there? Last we heard it takes two to tango, so you might ask why LaBruzzo only wants to offer the $1000 bribe to sterilize women? Ah HAH! He has you right where he wants you now! LaBruzzo would be happy to cauterize a few low-class vas deference tubes. Why, he’ll even offer you broke blokes $500 for the pleasure. Apparently your tubes are only worth half as much as fallopian tubes. See? He’s not sexist at all. Why, women’s reproductive rights are twice as expensive as men’s!

Of course, LaBruzzo’s ingenious eugenic plan would only be fair if he offered some form of incentive to upper class, college-educated (read White) families to have more children. After all, parity is an American value, right? So how ’bout some more tax breaks? Because if we’ve learned one thing from the gigantic clusterfuck that has become Wall Street, it’s that the winners of the Birthright Of Family Wealth lottery need more tax breaks. Knock a few more dollars off their itemized lists, that’s sure to get the bedroom rockin.’

In short, Rep. John LaBruzzo thinks he can magically succeed at what smarter and better men (and women) cannot; he can cure the financial disparities of an entire society’s classism by applying the simple tenets of sexism and racism to the whole lot of ‘em. By the way, LaBruzzo is a White upper-class post-grad with a kid, which clarifies where he would personally fall in the mix, though of course that’s beside his point, which I’m thinking resides on the top of his head.

On the other hand, this is from the same district that sent KKK leader David Duke to the legislation in 1989. So maybe LaBruzzo’s making progress after all.

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R.I.P. Paul Newman, star of most of the most worthwhile films to date, and a great humanitarian to boot. He died of cancer last night in his home, surrounded by family and friends.

So long, Butch. We loved thee well.

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The field of politics has been referred to as “the art of the possible,” but what place does art truly hold in politics (or vice versa)? While many artists would say that art should transcend - or at least be divorced from - politics, photographer Jill Greenberg seems to think otherwise. Greenberg, who exhibits her work on her webpage manipulator.com, made a very strong and very public statement about her latest subject, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, through her photography. Greenberg’s work has come under fire since one of her photos served as the cover for the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine. Greenberg was contracted to photograph McCain for the publication, but her website displays further photographs of McCain which are edited to literally look like something out of a horror movie. Perhaps even more provocative than the visual editing are the photograph captions, which read, consecutively:

Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.*

*mccain voted against mlk day

It was really fun to cheat on my car-injury-disabled first wife.

and

I called my wife a cunt in front of reporters.

While the shock value of the photos is obvious, their place in contemporary American politics, not to mention the art world, is unclear. While politically motivated blue-state activists might consider the photographs to be visionary, one cannot help but wonder what Greenberg hopes to accomplish by displaying them. At the same time, although media-minded red-state activists have decried the photographs as “sarcastic” at best, Greenberg certainly cannot be accused of dishonesty when it comes to her political assessments. The Canadian born artist makes no bones about her liberal political tendencies, nor is this the first time her professionalism has been questioned. Slate notes that her series of photographs entitled “End Times,” which showed toddlers in the midst of tantrums, gained international notoriety as her methods were questioned and labeled abusive by some critics. Greenberg did not hesitate to answer the criticism with contextual remarks which, in retrospect, may have provided a preview of the current controversy:

They’re not meant to be read as mere baby pictures; they’re meant to be a statement. As Greenberg herself explains in the gallery’s press release, “The first little boy I shot, Liam, suddenly became hysterically upset. It reminded me of helplessness and anger I feel about our current political and social situation.” “As a parent,” she continues, “I have to reckon with the knowledge that our children will suffer for the mistakes our government is making. Their pain is a precursor of what is to come.”

The controversy over the McCain photographs will likely spin further out of control before it settles; Greenberg has already been dropped by her agent in retribution for the series, and re-signed with a previous agency. This is despite the fact that her photographs have graced the covers of national periodicals such as Time Magazine, Newsweek, and TV Guide. And since controversy is hardly a detractor when it comes to media coverage, it seems likely that her career will not suffer from the series in the long run. But it remains to be seen whether Greenberg’s honesty is really her best policy; the Atlantic has stated publicly that it may file charges against her despite using one of the photographs from the series on its cover. Her journalistic integrity, if she had any, is likely now permanently kaput. On the other hand enthusiasts note that art is not journalism, and as super-activist and singer Bono says, “It is the artist’s job to define the problem.” Clearly Greenberg feels that right-wing politics are the problem; but her work may ultimately backfire on her. It engenders a certain amount of sympathy for McCain and illustrates nothing so well as the divisiveness and single-mindedness of the blue state/red state controversy… and in the end we may decide that’s the real enemy.

Read more of our series on ‘expanding the concept of art’

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Media hound and NFL referee Ed Hochuli poses for a local paper.

While we’re on the subject of football, let’s take a moment and bow our heads in remembrance of Ed Hochuli’s usual ball-busting bluster while he mutates into a whiny little figurehead demanding sympathy before our very eyes. Ed Hochuli, the man with guns of pure titanium who is constantly referred to - for reasons I’ll never understand - as the NFL’s best referee blew a gigantic and arguably game-deciding call during last weekend’s game between the San Diego Chargers and the Denver Broncos.

Now I’ve already gone on record as saying that no one needs a flashy referee, but let’s be honest. If any other ref had made the same mistake, would the entire NFL Referee Association have issued a press release about what a great guy he is? Why shouldn’t the NFL’s least deserving attention whore get a taste of his own whistle after such a colossal blunder? Ed will tell you why. Because what those refs do is hard. It’s really haaaard-duh! They have to take tests and everything! Ed even went on ESPN to bemoan the travails of having one’s performance taped and then reviewed by his boss, asking “how many” people are exposed to such scrutiny? Uh, that would be most of us Ed. But it shocks no one here at the Basement to hear that you think you’re the only guy in the world who has accountability on the job. After all, what are those massive arm muscles for, if not to hold the whole world on your own shoulders?

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Hubris: (a) a term used in modern English to indicate overweening pride, self-confidence, superciliousness, or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution.

(b) DeSean Jackson

DeSean Jackson’s obnoxiously stupid fumble in last night’s showdown between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles actually shook me out of my hurricane season malaise enough to make me want to blog again. Thanks DeSean. (BTW-the Phillies lost).

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Nothing says NEW ORLEANS like the crossroads of adversity and humor;

A house in the Uptown District of New Orleans posts a “No Wake” sign on the second story to prepare for hurricane flooding.

Every cataclysmic event adds new terminology to the common lexicon. For the 2000 presidential election, it was chad. For 9/11, it was box cutter, burka and ground zero. For Katrina, it was contraflow.

For Gustav, we have The Cone. The 5-day cone, the 3-day cone, the cone of anxiety!

In his recently blogged essay “The Cone of Insanity,” my friend Mike Gio tackles this vocabularic phenomenon:

“The National Hurricane Center calls it the Forecast Cone, that unsettlingly familiar graphic depiction of the projected path of a storm and the surrounding area representing the margin for error,” Gio writes.

“Meteorologist Carl Arredondo referred to the Forecast Cone as the Cone of Error, stressing the variations and inaccuracies that are possible. His colleague, Jonathan Myers, went a step further and called it the Cone of Uncertainty, which certainly isn’t helpful. The Palm Beach Post puts an ominous spin on things by calling it the Cone of Probability, as in: ‘It’s anybody’s guess right now, but hey, it’ll probably hit somewhere inside that Cone!’

“OK, most of us don’t have degrees in meteorology and certificates in storm prognostication, but you don’t have to be Nash Roberts to know that when something is simultaneously referred to as the Cone of Uncertainty and the Cone of Probability, something ain’t quite right. What’s next? The Cone of Confusion? The Cone of Contradiction? The Cone of Complete Cluelessness?”

I know the storm is imminent when the house up the street posts the sign. So here we go.

I’d say here we go again, but I wasn’t actually around for Hurricane Katrina. We moved to New Orleans almost exactly a year after that fateful storm passed through. A lot of people asked us: “Why would you want to go there?” It is a reasonable question. After all, the entire country watched as this city struggled and drowned. As the government later opined, “mistakes were made.” But New Orleans is in our family’s history, which means it is also in our blood. We wanted to come here for the simple reason of solidarity; we couldn’t bear to watch from afar, we had to come back. You see, the national news covered the storm, and it covered the devastation that followed. What it didn’t cover was the Rebirth. Unless you’re a New Orleanian or a serious Saints fan, you probably weren’t a part of the overwhelming spirit of a community that simply could not call any place else “home.”

We flatter ourselves that we have been a part of the Rebirth efforts here, which is what makes this new storm Gustav sting so badly. We want to stay. If you’ve never seen an entire city in the throws of post-traumatic stress disorder, maybe you don’t understand. Maybe all you see is an industrial center or a port. Maybe all you see is a city which has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Maybe all you see is boarded up windows and low-lying streets, just waiting to be flooded. But if so, New Orleans is more than what you see. Today I saw families boarding up windows. Today I saw people buying canned fish and batteries. But today, I also saw a young man pasting the only bumper sticker on his new car - a sticker that simply said “New Orleans.”

More than any place I have ever experienced, New Orleans is a community. It is a city where the words “friend” and “neighbor” mean something more than their dictionary definitions. It is a city where the word “porch” is a verb. It is the kind of city that could birth an entire musical genre (we’re talkin’ ’bout Jazz) out of sheer tenacity and strength of spirit, and probably no small amount of red wine. It is a city that gets into your soul, makes a nest, and settles down for the long haul. To us, it is home in every sense of the word.

Tomorrow, I will have to leave my home (Chris Rose leaves when Nash leaves*, I leave when the Saints leave). I will pack my family and my pets in a car, and drive to Kentucky where our nearest family members wait to literally shelter us from the storm (the nearest vacant hotels are in northern Arkansas anyway). We will drive all night, and we will arrive alive and safe. We will leave our home behind, and if Gustav does its worst, our home will flood, and struggle, and maybe drown once again. But there will be no dead in our attic, no need for the National Guard to paint an ugly number on our wall. We’ll head out, so that we can come back all the sooner.

Being a New Orleanian is kind of like being a pet person - either you get it or you don’t. If you do, I - we - want to say “Thank You.” Thank you to all the people in all the states who are preparing to help out our worst case scenario. Thank you to everyone who isn’t leaving it up to President Bush or FEMA to pull us through. Thank you for your care, your consideration, your generosity, and your help. But most of all, Thank You for understanding. We love our home, and no matter what Gustav or any other storm brings, we’re prepared to return. So tonight, as we’re clearing out our freezers and filling up our gas tank, we will eat our perishable foods, and we will drink our non-perishable wines, because this is New Orleans. We live it. We love it. And no matter what happens, we can’t wait to come home.

*Chris Rose never leaves.

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Today’s 5-day forecast cone for Hurricane Gustav;

New Orleans plans for a direct hit

If there’s one thing New Orleans residents have learned to take seriously, it’s hurricane preparedness. So locals are paying close attention to Hurricane Gustav, which has already taken 23 lives when hitting landfall in Haiti. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency, and preparations for evacuation by Labor Day weekend have begun in for New Orleans residents. This week marks the anniversaries of both hurricanes Katrina and Andrew - the two most devastating hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast in recent history, which brings a high level of anxiety for local residents who experienced the storms and their aftermaths. For our readers outside the Gulf Coast, imagine the anniversary of a large-scale disaster such as 9/11; all the emotional turmoil of a catastrophic event is re-lived not only because of the date, but because another storm now threatens the same region. Since the Bush administration essentially washed its hands of the Katrina disaster, levees have not been repaired - let alone strengthened - and major flooding remains a possibility for the city.

For our local readers: we encourage you to resist the temptation to become enmeshed with disastrous predictions, and instead empower yourselves and your loved ones by maintaining as much of your normal schedule as possible. Once you have heard the most recent updates, turn off storm coverage. Listening to hour upon hour of imprecise predictions will not provide you with new information, and news networks often engage in unnecessary catastrophism in order to raise ratings. The best way to combat anxiety about a storm is to empower yourself by being prepared. Develop or revisit a plan in case an evacuation is called for, and a plan for weathering the storm locally. Following are some links that can help you stay appraised of the latest weather alerts, and help you complete your preparedness plan. Remember that anxiety is normal under these conditions, but don’t let it interfere with your ability to take care of yourself, your loved ones, and your community. We are all going through this together, and together we can weather any storm, even with Mayor Nagin in charge.

• NOAA Gustav Public Advisory Updates - The most recent updates from the National Hurricane Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is an easy way to stay updated on the latest weather news without becoming overwhelmed by repetitive guesswork and overly-dramatic predictions on the news and weather channels. You can also find the latest and news on NOLA.com’s New Orleans Hurricane Center website.
• General Evacuation Guidelines - From the city’s official site, includes tips, evacuation routes and estimated drive times, and emergency broadcast stations around the state.
• Southeast Hurricane Evacuation Guide - Click to see where you can get copies of the guide including evacuation routes or download it here.
• Gambit Weekly’s tips for hurricane preparations - including evacuation checklists and location guides.
• NOLA.com’s tips for emergency food and water planning - Great tips from Katrina survivors, including how to store frozen food even when the power goes out, how much water you really need, and of course, the requisite red wine (no chilling necessary).
• Plan for your pets - Don’t forget to plan for your fuzzy friends. Many shelters will not admit animals, so your pets may need a backup evacuation plan. This link has information on how to plan for your pet, as well as animal shelter options and pet-friendly hotels and motels. You can also find tips on the Louisiana ASPCA website, or call them directly at (504) 581-PETS or (504) 368-5191.

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The New Orleans Saints defense took on Carson Palmer’s nose during last Saturday’s pre-season game.

Palmer is not planning to play this week.

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Olympic gymnasts Alicia Sacramone of the U.S. and Cheng Fei of China battled it out on the vault.

Two Olympic athletes’ website profiles were far ahead of the rest of the pack in terms of internet hits today - Michael Phelps, with his record 8 gold medals; and Alicia Sacramone, the gymnast who fell twice in the team finals, earning much of the blame for the American team missing out on the gold. Because as much as Americans love a champion, we L.O.V.E. an underdog. So we were pulling for Alicia tonight in the women’s vault finals. Unfortunately for Alicia, Olympic bias reared its ugly head, leading us to wonder which is worse; losing to a fetus, or losing to a fetus who clearly landed out of bounds on her own vault? China’s Cheng Fei was awarded a 15.562, ousting Sacramone, after a vault landing which our TiVO swears was out of bounds…

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Oprah whispers, “I see poor people.”

We’ve been known to call out talk shows for their total lack of social relevance, so it seems only fair to offer a rare shout out to the Oprah show for today’s special feature on poverty in America. Oprah (who shouldn’t be so shocked seeing as she grew up in an impoverished Mississippi community) invites Anderson Cooper, who has been at the forefront of reporting on the poverty exposed by Hurricane Katrina, to discuss his experiences reporting on the devastation and poverty since the storm, and sends him into impoverished communities around the nation to expose the extent of poverty in the U. S. The episode is a refreshing use of a national platform to discuss a very real, very serious issue. Finally, a talk show with something to talk about.

Facts about poverty in the United States:

• Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.
• In 2006, 46 million Americans have no health insurance.
• Over a third (36%) of families living below the poverty line are uninsured.
• More than 9 million children lack health insurance in America.
• Eighteen Thousand people die each year in the United States because they are uninsured.
• The United States has higher child poverty than seven other major industrialized western countries (UNICEF, State of the World’s Children Report 1993, 1992). The U.S. child poverty rate is dramatically higher than those of Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

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