Destruction! Panic! Mayhem!

I'm on leave at my parents' house in Baton Rouge right now, and we're among the lucky ones whose power was only out for a few days after Hurricane Gustav hit. We got cable and internet back today, and I feel like I should feel guilty that we have everything back while there are still neighborhoods and outlying towns that won't even have power for two to three more weeks.

I took leave for a wedding in Dallas but had taken a few extra days off to spend home in Baton Rouge. This leave, of course, was requested way before there was a hurricane threat. I asked for and received a leave extension until tomorrow, but now Tropical Storm Hanna is hitting the North Carolina coast, which is right where I need to go. I can't get away from these things.

Baton Rouge escaped substantial damage from Katrina and Rita in 2005, but we weren't so lucky with Gustav. I've never seen so many trees down, telephone and power poles snapped in half and lying in streets, houses and cars crushed by trees. I'm just waiting for the local news anchors to begin their newscasts with, "You've dealt with no power, impassable roads, stores and gas stations closed, and dusk-to-dawn curfews, but now a new threat is emerging: flesh-eating zombies."

And I didn't realize it until today when the cable and internet came back, but the -- to employ a horribly overused phrase -- aftermath of the hurricane has very much dropped off the national media stage. In 2005, the media gorged itself on a weeks-long Katrina binge, and gave a shameful performance in New Orleans, instantly reporting as fact rampant, city-wide looting, crooked police leaving their posts, lawless militias shooting at police and doctors, and "refugees" defecating on the floor of the Super Dome in between cannibalistic dinners. Nevermind that much of the Mississippi coast was gone -- there was a political statement to make! The human toll to the state isn't nearly as high now as it was after Katrina, but the infrastructural damage is probably higher. It's hard to not be cynical and wonder what the media reaction would be if this hurricane hit New Orleans as hard as it did Baton Rouge. I have yet to see Shepard Smith and Anderson Cooper standing knee-deep in floodwaters on Joor Road, near tears because no one's coming to help these poor people.

Ray Nagin loyalists patrol Canal Street in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

But everyone's taking it in stride like they always do during these things, and the little things continue to make me proud. Like the way people are cooperating with each other on the road and treating powerless street lights the way they're supposed to be treated -- as four-way stops. I'm also slightly relieved that the welfare queens aren't being paraded around on national television, screaming and waving their fingers because no one's given them money yet.

And also, thank God for Bobby Jindal. He is taking charge and running the show like a governor should, and it makes me wonder what our former governor, Kathleen Blanco, is doing now that she isn't here to cry in front of the camera during a hurricane. Granted, Jindal probably learned a lot from the previous administration how one should not act as governor, but he is still such a great and natural leader.