Herald.com | 09/10/2005 | Humor after tragedy

Dave Barry is a classic...here's a brief snippet from an interview (not related to humor after tragedy):

Fiedler: You've talked often about the most embarrassing thing you've every done to your children, to Rob actually. I think Sophie is too young to be embarrassed.

Barry: She doesn't get embarrassed yet, but don't worry. I've argued that your job, your main job as a parent is to embarrass your children. It's also the most effective way to control them. But this actually was one of my favorite columns ever. I got a call from the Oscar Meyer Weiner Corp. saying that they were bringing the Wienermobile to Miami and they asked if I wanted to drive it for a day. Of course I did. What I did was pick my son up at junior high school. Here he's in peer pressure hell and he comes out of his junior high and there's all the moms in their minivans and looming up behind is a really big hot dog with the loudspeaker going, ''Rob Barry, Please report to the Weinermobile.'' If a 13-year-old could suffer a heart attack, he would have.

I know what you're thinking, you scarred him psychologically, but it's worth it.

Fiedler: He's now 24.

Barry: Twenty-four, he can beat me up, but we've reconciled over that issue. He made up for it by taking about seven years to get through college. So he made me pay.


(A snippet related to humor after tragedy):

Fiedler: How long will it be before there are jokes about hurricane Katrina?

Barry: There probably already have been. They'll be good jokes and bad jokes. And the bad jokes will be at some expense of the victims and the good ones and, in fact, I heard some of them already. The good ones will be making fun of the unbelievably incompetent preparation for response to Katrina by pretty much everybody. That's a good use of humor to mock failure like that and then hold the people who, cause we can't indict them. We don't even know who they are a probably, yet. But at least ridicule is a very effective weapon that people respond to.

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Hmmm, I heard Jon Stewart already making fun of New Orleans....and I admit it, I laughed. It was funny! The state of Louisianna and its governmental leaders have to take responsibility for not being better prepared for a disaster that has been forecasted several times by different agencies. Come on...your city is below sea level, in a bowl shape, with poorly constructed dirt levees (from what I understand, don't quote me on that) that were not built to withstand a category 5 hurricane...what did you expect might happen? You have to allow for the possibility and then prepare to handle it if it DOES occur. Plus, with the restrictions being placed on the federal aid the President wanted to send, you kinda shot yourself in the foot...you can't criticize the lack of assistance when you won't let federalized troops come in or out-of-state doctors care for patients.