confessions of a red-headed stepchild: what a disgrace

"When America looks at the huge expanse of filthy, fetid water that has drowned New Orleans, it becomes a mirror in which it finally sees the scars on its own face. The scars of poverty, of racism, of ideological zealotry, of public corruption and of environmental degradation, usually concealed by a cosmetic media."

Fintan O'Toole, writing in The Irish Times