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Weekend In New Orleans
In New Orleans news reporting sometimes the headlines will read "5 shot within 4 hours," and other times such facts must be pieced together by faithful readers, and supplemented with TV news. It was from TV that I got the numbers I wrote about the other day, 7 shootings, two of them deaths, in a two-day period ending at 5p.m. Saturday.
So the good news is the city is experiencing a period where there are not shootings and murder every day of the week. The bad news is the shootings we are having here are relatively high profile: children armed with guns murdering other children; teenage bystanders getting hit in crossfire; 8-year-old girls being shot in the back; a pregnant local girl killed by stray gunfire on a Mardi Gras parade route; a Jazzfest tourist murdered near the fairgrounds; aging rock stars chasing purse snatchers and being shot in the leg; cars burning on the side of the road with bullet-riddled bodies in the trunk.
A large part of the yearly murders in New Orleans are gangster killing gangster. As long as their aim is true and no innocents are nicked in crossfire, nobody, as far as I can tell, really gives a fuck about these murders. We won't admit it but we think it is cost effective justice. The perpetrators are scary people we can't seem to or don't want to understand. Born of us, maybe, but these hoodlings are foreigners on our soil. They cannot be of us because then we would be of them and that is too scary to conceive. We suppress the memory of 200--400 murdered bodies every year and glorify the travesty of the occasional tourist or upstanding citizen who will every so often get shot dead in New Orleans.
I think the criminals are either crying out for help or are merciless purveyors of irony because over the years sure as a local politician or police chief reports that crime is down the next month is filled with bizarre and heinous violent crime. Most recently our police chief was all over the local media patronizing all us dumb locals with his poor imitation of the Gore/Kerry sigh of condescension--murder is down by twenty percent people, I don't know what to tell you, you people who persist that crime is up, this perception that crime is up is wrong. Well Ok, I stand corrected.
By the way, Sunday, about one in the morning, I heard four loud gunshots, maybe two blocks away. No sirens, no subsequent reports from the media. Today, in Tuesday's paper, is an unrelated Sunday shooting that resulted in death, in Central City at 4th and Daneel.
So, a Monday headline could have, but did not, read--New Orleans weekend, at least 8 shot, 3 dead. We are not allowed to behave as if it is pertinent but all the victims may be presumed black, and poor.
And now, late in the succeeding week of a weekend where 8 people were shot, I feel not too much at all about it. It is a completely forgotten series of events. We all have our lives to get on with; there is no point in remembering. And our consciences as represented by media coverage are quiet. I would like to suggest that there is something wrong with all of us for forgetting so easily but that's all I'm going to do is suggest, I'm not going to point any fingers, or indulge in self-recrimination.
Lastly, almost daily NO media updates inform us that justice will be served if you are stupid enough to kill a very white tourist. There is motion towards trying as adults the four teenagers involved in the Jazzfest slaying. First the 14-year-old shooter has to pass a psych exam and then it must be proved the juvenile detention system will be incapable of reforming the alleged young killer. So if the kid passes all his tests and the state (juvenile system) fails its' tests, then ostensibly there will be a go ahead for the adult-style prosecution of this 14-year-old. In which case the state will undoubtedly begin conversations about the death penalty. I have been on record as not being against every instance of state sanctioned death so I would have to in this case look again at the facts, see what I feel.
Ok, well, I've thought about it. I think we should just round up all bad people, and kill them. Then only good people would have guns, and the world would be safer, for, um, more killing. The benefits of this in New Orleans would be immeasurable. If only good people were doing the killing then killing would be a good thing. It could be celebrated. We could have more parades, more tourists, more money, more guns, more killing, more parades…