I’m not the first to comment on this, both Gawker and boingboing are carrying it. These photos are from the AP, as distrbuted through My Yahoo:

“A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005.”

“Additional residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.”

Hey! The AP stole Chris Rock’s act! Too bad it’s not funny. Just a more blatant example of the quiet racism that slips by us every day in this country.

I’ve spent a lot of time in New Orleans; it’s one of my favorite cities in the world. There is no where else like it on earth–grandeur and decay, and an intensity of life that has nothing to do with Bourbon Street. But every display of decadance is rivaled in a sad show of poverty. The press is only touching on the issue of how the haves and have nots experienced the hurricane differently.

Everyone was told to leave. But some people had no way of getting out or anywhere to get to. No car, no money for the last train or bus, no relatives close by. And now with the levees blown, no amount of stocking up could prepare a human being for a month without drinking water. You can’t boil if your stove is submerged. I don’t even want to think about the issue of insurance.

What does this have to do with wine? Nothing. But if you’re fortunate enough to enjoy a bottle tonight, I want you to feel at most a little lucky or at least a little guilty.

Then donate at least the price of that bottle to the Second Harvest organization. I work with them and their food banks. They are a religious-neutral, national, yet grassroots food bank network and organization that you can trust. Donate here: www.secondharvest.org. With as much traffic as I get, if each of you donated just $5 or $10 dollars–it would be tremendous.