This Looting is Giving Me Déjà Vu about the Looting

Ever since I started watching coverage of the Katrina disaster unfolding in New Orleans and Mississippi, I've been experiencing non-stop Déjà Vu. For example, when the CNN talking heads mention looting, I see a clip of a group of men wading through the streets with some kind of clothing or sheets or white towels slung over their shoulders. And then I see someone walking out of a convenience store with an armful of Pampers. Then there's the guy with boxes of Snickers. And the lady who waves something at the camera, followed by the shot of the guy with some kind of clothing or sheets or white towels slung over his shoulder, somebody with a load of Pampers, the Snickers guy, waving lady, the guy with white stuff...

It's some kind of Attack of the Clones, as far as I can tell. There seems to be fifteen or twenty people behind this Wave of Looting, since they seem to show up in all the clips. And odder still is the fact that these people keep stealing the same items! The Snickers guy, for example, always carts off a bunch of boxes of candy, always the same candy, always stacked the same way. The same is true of the Pampers lady, the Waving Woman, the White Stuff Guy, and everyone else.

And it's not just the looters who seem to all look the same. CNN also shows, almost continually, clips of people being rescued from rooftops. There's the two men, one of whom waves a white flag at a passing helicopter. Then there's the basket with the two children. Then it's a basket with one boy, followed by two guys on a rooftop, a basket with two children, the basket with one boy, the guy waving the white flag, etc.

But most of all it's the looting, non-stop rotation of those same four clips of people who are most likely homeless now illegaly removing merchandise from a flooded store. Clearly, the looting is the most important aspect of this disaster, far outshadowing the incredible human toll, the loss of tens of thousands of homes, the fact that hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents won't be able to return home -- if they still have a home -- for at least one month. Never mind all that; just keep your eye on the Pampers gal and the White Stuff guy. That's where the real story is. Well, that and all the looting.