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As I type these words, the lead story on the CNN website is a classic example of “good” moral panic reporting about the “blistering pace” of murders in New Orleans. Nearly one per day this month alone, and with a per capita rate that makes other alleged hotbeds of violent crime look placid and calm by comparison. The story itself goes to great pains to claim that the rising tide of crime in the City That Care Forgot predates the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. The lesson? New Orleans has long been a crime-ridden, dangerous city. Always. If things are bad there right now, it’s got nothing to do with the storm or its aftermath. Nothing at all.

It’s an especially curious — and disturbing — story, given that today is the two year anniversary of Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast. The “murder board” story isn’t a breaking story or time sensitive news, after all. And, barring the appearance of a fast-breaking bit of news, CNN could just as easily have devoted their lead spot to an anniversary piece: “Katrina: Two Years Later” or “Rebuilding the Big Easy” or some such. It’s a pretty safe bet that when the six year anniversary of 9/11 rolls around in two weeks, CNN (and much of the rest of the mainstream media) will quite happily run such anniversary pieces. Stories with sentimental titles like “We Will Never Forget” or “The Day Everything Changed” or “Where Were You When . . .” There will be plenty of patriotic flag-waving. And New York will almost certainly not be the target of “blame the victim” reporting.

Of course, the “problem” with journalism that would remember Katrina in the same fashion that 9/11 has been (and will be) is that such reports would need to acknowledge that, two years later, large swaths of New Orleans are still in shambles. That the federal government completely failed — in both the short and the long term — to respond effectively to the first massive disaster to strike the US in the post-9/11 era. That thousands of people displaced by the storm and the flood still can’t go home again.

And heaven forbid that CNN should point fingers at the government for failing to serve the public during a major catastrophe.

1. The start of another new school year is upon us. And I’m always astounded by the way that this time of year can be filled with amazing optimism and amazing stress, all at once. All that fresh energy in the air, and all those grandiose hopes that this will finally be the semester where all the students are sharp and dedicated and eager to be here, and that everything will run smooth as silk . . . and all that frenzied energy in the air, courtesy of the syllabi that aren’t quite finished yet and the hours spent at the photocopier so that things can all be in place for Day One.
2. The start of another school year means the end of another summer. And this one ended with a fine gathering of a small battalion of friends (and family of friends) at our place on Saturday night . . . and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. The grilled salmon was tasty, the home brew (something called August Ale, and my first batch in more than a decade) was a hit, and the three-table Scrabble tournament (the ostensible excuse for the gathering) was fun, but it was the game of Balderdash that put the capper on the evening. You know you’ve had a good party when your guests blog about it the next day.
3. ‘Round here, the start of this particular school year may also bring a strike by clerical staff. Let’s hope the U’s administration manages to come back to the bargaining table on this one — quickly — in ways that make everyone happy.

Or maybe just the celebrities. Accidents only become important, after all, when celebrities are affected by them. Eleven people were evidently hurt in the accident discussed in the story — one of them seriously — but because there are “no findings to suggest anyone famous was involved in the accident,” CNN can happily spend most of its time talking about Tom Cruise.

Let’s kickstart this blog a bit, shall we? And let’s try doing so with a recurring quick-hit approach that will (hopefully) goad me to drop a fresh chunk of prose here at least once a week.

1. A few folks have inquired about the long-promised but not-yet-delivered intellectual property tale. And I’d love to say that this has reached a point of resolution that would allow me to share it here. But, alas, the denouement that was afoot in April got postponed . . . and has since been deferred . . . and may still be a few weeks away from achieving sufficient closure to go public with the tale. But I haven’t forgotten. Promise. (Truly curious parties can always contact me off-blog for further details.)
2. I keep meaning to write a more detailed post about the Cultural Studies Now conference — even though Ted Striphas has already proclaimed that my previous tease of a post fulfilled that duty. There’s more to say than that, I think, but it’s been a hectic month since London, and the fast approaching semester only adds to the frenzy. But this story, too, will be shared.
3. The latest entry in my personal lifelong struggle with institutional “check one box only” approaches to racial identification came last week, when the University noted that it did not have a formal race/ethnicity code connected to my personnel file . . . and asked me to fill out this form. I was particularly amused by the last two lines:
   

   The University may acquire this information by visual survey. This may, however, result in the collection of erroneous information.

   I have fantasies of the University sending teams of ethnographers — all trained in the subtle art of “visual survey” with respect to racial identification — into the field to suss out the “truth” about folks such as myself who “fail” to shoehorn ourselves into a single box. And I want to be a fly on the wall for the deliberations that result from different team members deciding that different visual cues are the key to answering the question “correctly.” “Sure, his skin’s pink enough,” someone will say, “but those aren’t a white man’s lips.”

I’ve been meaning to post about the Cultural Studies Now conference and my trip to London ever since I got back . . . but Margaret’s mother arrived for a week’s visit three hours after I got back . . . and then three hours before she left, the roofers showed up to start what turned out to be a three-day job that drove Margaret and I out of the house for much of the duration (have you ever tried to write coherent prose while half a dozen men pounded on the ceiling directly above you for hours on end?) . . . and then three hours or so after the roofers were done, the I-35W bridge collapsed . . . which has been its own distraction for the past 24 hours or so, partially for the “disaster porn” that goes along with tragedies of this sort, but mostly because of the varied and multiple rounds of “checking in” that have taken place since last night.

Sometime over the past week, I did actually manage to HTMLify my presentation from the conference, but let me save a more detailed report on the event as a whole for a later post. For now, I’m still processing the bridge collapse. So far, at least, no one from my circle of friends and colleagues and acquaintances was on/under the bridge at the crucial moment yesterday . . . but given the where and when of the situation, it’s still perfectly plausible that someone I know wasn’t so lucky, and I simply don’t know it yet. The bridge is — was — right next to campus, and I-35W is the major north-south highway running through Minneapolis. I didn’t use that bridge every day, but it also wouldn’t have been unusual for me to have done so: I crossed it at least twice last week, walked by it on two other occasions, and was more or less right around the corner a mere hour before it fell.

For me, though, I think the biggest chunk of my “there but for the grace of Elvis” reaction to yesterday’s tragedy is the fact that Minneapolis is very much a river-straddling city. Unlike, say, St. Louis or Memphis, where the river marks the line between the city and the suburbs (and not always the most desirable of suburbs either) and one can plausibly spend years living and working in the area without ever needing to cross a bridge, here the river pretty much runs through the heart of things. I’m sure there must be people in town whose lives are such that they rarely have to cross the river, but I suspect they’re the exception, rather than the rule. There are six or seven different bridges across the Mississippi that I might use on any given day for any number of reasons, and I can easily need to cross the river a dozen times (or more) every week. I’m not exactly worried about crossing those bridges again — the odds that a bridge that’s stood for decades will crumble at precisely the moment you’re on it are still pretty damned small — but I’m also mindful of the fact that I could very easily have been on the I-35W bridge at the wrong time yesterday . . . or that those long odds might’ve kicked in during any of the other bridge-crossing moments that routinely happen.