This bit on hurricane naming is so ridiculous, on so many levels, that I don't know where to begin.

If the rescue effort had not been so mishandled, and if those who suffered so needlessly had not been so black and so poor, perhaps Hurricane Katrina would have been just another destructive storm, alongside the likes of Charley and Andrew and Hugo. (There is no Keisha or Kwame.)

First off, why do I get the feeling that the very writer calling for more inclusive hurricane naming would most likely have been one of the people calling such naming racist had the weather agencies adopted such a policy under their own accord?

I shudder to think of the protests that would have arisen had a terribly violent killer storm that happened to hit a big city been named Hurricane Anfernee or Hurricane Tyreal. No invocations of "diversity" or "inclusion" would be able to prevent the National Weather Center for being calling racist on that one.

Secondly, what if you're a person who finds the very notion of "black" names and "white" names to be rather racist? By lamenting the lack of Hurricane Keisha, this writer is in effect assuming that black people aren't (or can't be) named Charley or Katrina. Isn't that a tad racist, or at least prejudiced (emphasis on the "pre-judge" part)?

And finally, all hurricanes used to be named *after women.* (Cause they be angry and bitchy). A generation ago, everyone started to complain that such naming was ridiculously sexist, so we branched out and started naming storms after men, too. In short, hurricane naming is already rather progressive, so quit complaining.

* * *

Also, in terms of political correctness, there are few things stranger than this debate over calling Katrina survivors "refugees." Jesse Jackson and many other leaders (who happen to be both black and white) have said that calling them refugees is un-American. But, wait.

Isn't this a supreme sort of American chauvinism? Isn't saying, "No *American* can ever be a refugee, dammit!" effectively saying that refugees is a term reserved only for Africans, Eastern Europeans, or poor Asians?

It's hard to imagine a line of thinking more racist, backward, and ethnocentric than that.

Of course, President-Out-of-It isn't calling them refugees, either. I heard his radio address today and he kept using the much softer, passive-sounding "evacuee."

Spare me.

At least refugee implies people on the move under their own power. An "evacuee" sounds like a fellow who couldn't take his own life into his hands and effectively became cargo in the belly of a transport. (I guess this is the arch-liberatarian in me coming out...)

Anyway, my point to all this rambling is that calling the term refugee "un-American" (and in effect, implying Americans are different and better than everyone else) is the sort of thinking that many on Jackson's side of the political spectrum have long railed against.

And with that, I've totally lost track of political discourse in this country. Again.