After a dizzying, delicious three months, it was with profound sadness that I waved goodbye to my twenty-ninth summer and began the school year facing the one-two punch of Hurricane Katrina and the fourth anniversary of September 11th. When I’m not being an intrepid fag hag, I am an administrator at one of New York’s biggest universities. I work with some terrific people and some positively wretched ones (as do we all, of course), but the wretched ones have been rearing their heads even more obnoxiously with the imminent move of our department to a swank building downtown. University professors are a bizarre and trying breed, and all decisions are usually made with the maximum amount of entitlement, pettiness and acrimony. This move was trying my patience WELL before September began, and in the aftermath of our nation’s shared misery and embarrassment, I found my normally tranquil nature beginning to fray dangerously around the edges when poring over four-page emails listing a professor’s office chair specifications, and the like.

My original summer vacation plans had included a stop in New Orleans; I’d never been to the lusciously sinful, history-laden city and had looked forward to gorging myself on booze, blues, boys and beignets. But we had to change our itinerary and never made it; a rescheduled visit in October is of course no longer on the table.

I read about the city’s devastation with abject horror as I sat in a café in Grand Central Station that Friday awaiting my Berkshires-bound train. The remains of my unforgivably bourgeois lunch—tarragon chicken salad, diet raspberry iced tea and low-carb vanilla gelato—lay spread around me. Athain and I were driving to Albany that evening for the American Idol tour (my second one of the summer). That day I truly disgusted myself. I often joke about my utter lack of racial identity, but the agonized, terrorized, pained faces gazing at me from the newspaper pages tore at my heart. It is rare that I ever need to confront or acknowledge my African-American ethnicity; I’m whiter than most white people I know. I sat on the train and gazed out at the lush foliage, my guts roiled by an overwhelming flood of sympathy and an equally overwhelming lack of empathy. Dig on this sentence for a minute: I have not the faintest idea what it is like to be black in America.

That was my state of mind that evening, even as Athain and I got roaring drunk and cheered on our favorite Idols, and the next day on the way home. I dutifully made a contribution to the Red Cross, said a prayer and got on about the business of living, as I’m sure many of my fellow New Yorkers did as well, but it failed to ease my mind. We talk about living in this city as a badge of courage, knowing deep down that no one is safe, that these beautiful, majestic buildings rising into the sky all may as well have giant targets painted on them. And in a way it does take enormous bravery to carry on here, to trust in whatever gods you believe in to get you home safely at day’s end. But what is it really like to live in someone or something else’s crosshairs? How many of us live every day in terror, of the late child-support check, the cop with a nervous trigger finger or too-eager nightstick, a society that simply does not give a damn whether you live or die. I am a fierce and loyal advocate for LGBT rights, and I am proud to stand with those who fight for the right for gays and lesbians to get married, to abolish workplace discrimination, to unite homosexuals and heterosexuals on common ground. But there is a cross-section of society—the poor—that does not even have the means to advocate for themselves, that are utterly at the mercy and whimsy of other people. In America. Living in the crosshairs, each and every day. How can people dare to make comparisons between what happened on September 11th and what happened to New Orleans, except to cite the catastrophic failure of the United States government in each situation? How can people dare to make comparisons between any form of discrimination? They are all wrong and they are all deserving of eradication, but I am sorry folks, they are NOT all equal. An un-PC point of view, to be sure, but political correctness is part of the problem. But I digress (typical).

All weekend I watched the news, almost obsessively, marveling at those who selflessly went above and beyond the call; working into the night loading trucks with diapers, toilet paper and bottled water and making the sixteen-hour drive down to New Orleans to lend a hand. People opened their homes to total strangers indefinitely, without a second thought. I watched first-hand accounts from journalists on the scene, saw their professional demeanor shatter like china beneath an anvil over and over again as they described the stench and the despair and the dead bodies abandoned by roadsides, grilling hapless government officials like professional attack dogs. It was a display of the kind of moxie and mettle that makes me at times deeply proud to be an American. I love being an activist, demanding change and answers from the powers-that-be, and I love the way Americans display their own tendencies toward activism in times of crisis, always willing to roll up their sleeves and pitch in to make things better. Our day-to-day actions are often contradictory, but I firmly believe our hearts are almost always in the right place. Well, most of us anyway.

But soon enough, the shenanigans began. Kanye West launched into a totally inappropriate (if not without merit) diatribe concerning the state of race relations in America, in the middle of a national hurricane relief broadcast, coincidentally right before his album dropped (and no one is ever going to convince me that his little speech was 100% spontaneous—Kanye West is no dummy). For a number of utterly predictable media personalities it was business as usual, from Daryn Kagan yelping on CNN about how “someone” needed to go in there and stop the black people from looting, like the first priority for the National Guard was to keep people from taking stuff from flooded stores! Or Rush Limbaugh calling New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin “Mayor Nager.” Thanks Rush—you’re a credit to your profession. Dicksmack. And then of course, there were the telethons.

Neither the 9/11 telethon or the Katrina telethon was actually CALLED a telethon, it was some gaggy name like “Concert for Hope” or what have you, but make no mistake about it, they were telethons. And they did raise a hell of a lot of money, no question. But they annoyed me, for two reasons. One: it is first and foremost the federal government’s responsibility to feed, clothe, house and/or provide monetary compensation for victims of these types of disasters, not mine. What do we pay taxes for? Does Japan hold effing telethons every time they have an earthquake? I don’t know, maybe they do. But something tells me their government actually has enough sense to earmark part of their budget for crises of this nature. Gee, what a concept.

The second reason that these particular telethons piss me off is the very nature of telethons. There are telethons for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and whatever the hell it is Jerry’s Kids have. Telethons originated for the purpose of bringing the public’s attention to an issue that they might not otherwise know or care about. I’m sure muscular dystrophy sucks the big one, but I don’t have it, I don’t know anyone who does, I don’t even know what it is (so I looked it up: “a group of genetic diseases characterized by progressive weakness and degeneration of the skeletal muscles that control movement.” Yep, sucks.), so why would I be motivated to donate money to finding a cure unless I happened to be flipping channels one day and caught Robert Goulet wheeling some kid on stage and singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone?” Of course he won’t walk alone, he has linguine for leg muscles! He won’t walk at all! But again, I digress. That is what telethons are for.

But unless you were living under a rock, on Jupiter, or deaf, dumb, blind and illiterate, you knew about 9/11. You knew about Katrina. And if you chose to, you donated what you could, when you could. I didn’t need Kid Rock or Alicia Keys serenading me in order to plug my credit card into a website. And I didn’t give any more because of that. Is that what it takes for some residents of this country to open their wallets in the face of unrelenting human suffering? I mean really, what the fuck?

Oh, and the condescension of these celebrities making the pitches! I watched the MTV one for about two minutes before my stomach turned over. Usher has the nerve to tell me, “Give all you can.” Fuck you, you bling-encrusted weenie! I have $200 in my checking account until next week! YOU give all YOU can!!! I’d love to know what some of the backstage riders were for some of these people to deign to appear on the telethon in the first place. Visit The Smoking Gun website and have a look at what Jennifer Lopez’ requests were for her to record exactly one line of a 9/11 charity single. Quite chuckalicious.

And what, if anything, do you suppose our nation’s richest politicos (translation: the Republican ones) are donating to the hurricane relief effort? How much do you think Trent Lott will give after he finishes rebuilding his tragically destroyed house? How much will Barbara Bush give? Sean Hannity? John Bolton? Combined, probably less than me (I donated $25). The people that are indirectly responsible for the current condition of New Orleans—the administrations that cut the funding to shore up the levees, appointed incompetent bootlicks to run the organizations in charge of safeguarding this country, and encouraged and profited from a culture of shady backroom dealings and political cronyism that virtually guaranteed a lack of competent, accountable government in that city, as well as the instigating “journalists” that have turned this country into a snakepit of divisiveness and intolerance while laughing all the way to the bank—should have their bank accounts drained to pay for the cleanup. Or lined up and shot—it makes no difference to me. Every day I open the newspaper and am embarrassed for my country. With every “accidental” shooting death of a young black man at the hands of the NYPD, every jaw-droppingly stupid and callous celebrity comment whenever they’re asked about anything beyond who made their shoes, with every constitutional right trampled on, indifferently amended or just plain x-ed out with a red Sharpie, with every stumble and bumble made by our commander-in-chimp. And now, with the ugly, heinous truth writ large—that the poorest and most helpless of our citizens lay waiting, suffering and dying for agonizing days because our government didn’t care enough to mobilize resources fast enough to save them. That is what the rest of the world sees, no matter how many telethons we hold, or individual and group efforts we put forth. As an added bonus, those who wish us harm get to see how America reacts the face of real crisis. More dancing in the streets, I imagine.

When I was considering what to call this piece, the title of Michael Jackson’s vanity song that was ostensibly for charity, “What More Can I Give,” came to mind immediately. I looked up the lyrics, hoping they might reflect some of the exhaustion, disillusionment and depression I was feeling at the state of the world, and questioning about how much my own efforts were worth. Alas, the song is total bullshit, by turns whiny, treacly, incoherent and oblivious, much like the response of most of our elected officials to Hurricane Katrina. (He also cribs directly from “I’ll Be There,” in it. Way to be original there, Mikey boy.) So I took a stab at writing my own song. Here goes:

The flecks in the sidewalk that sparkle
Are nothing if not fool’s gold
There’s paradise promised in other worlds
Or so all our killers are told
I watch devastation each night on the news
The fear eats me up from inside
Our president clowns while New Orleans drowns
What chance do we have to survive?
I’ve given the sweat of my back and my brow
I’ve pounded my hands on the floor
I’ve had my heart broken a thousand times over
How can it break any more?
The ultimate sacrifice made one September
They died so that others may live
And then keep on dying in lands far away
Tell me, what more can they give?
The choruses echo, who’s right and who’s wrong
And who loves this country the best
Fights on the airwaves and the op-ed pages
Make of our hearts less and less
I trusted, believed in the good of mankind
I thought we’d heed justice’s call
But how will our children judge this point in time
Will we have children at all?
I’ve given my love and my money as well
I’ve prayed till I ached from the strain
All of this shouting and anger and fire
Hey, has it all been in vain?
We watch as the essence of what makes us good
Drains out like sand through a sieve
Take from me my innocence, siphon my trust
There’s no more I can possibly give
And yet trouble is always a moment away
The world scatters us on a lark
We struggle and strive, bring hope to the hopeless
And never succumb to the dark
So much rests on fate, on the flip of a coin
Who dies and who lives every day
But those who reach out to embrace a worn soul
Tip the scales just a bit more life’s way
We have to keep fighting, no matter the cost
For the purity of our own souls
For what makes us proud and what brings us joy
And all of the values we hold
Though I’m sapped of my strength, wrung out like a rag
I can pledge every bit that I’m worth
For causes less noble than what we face now
Have plucked men and women from earth
Envision our world as peaceful and gentle
And bursting with love for all man
And everyone trusting and helping each other
For that, Lord, I’ll give all I can.

Yeah, well, I’m no R. Kelly, but I gave it a shot. I suppose in the end, it’s appropriate to mouth platitudes every now and then, when things look really shitty. All that junk that belongs in a fortune cookie—”When you’re flat on your back, the only way to look is up,” “It’s always darkest before the dawn,’ etc. Charlize Theron’s character in Monster says as she’s led off to Death Row, “They gotta tell you something.”

And they do, don’t they? I’ve read some of the most depressing, apocalyptic articles, about all the horrors waiting in the wings to obliterate our world/universe/life as we know it. I’m half expecting to open the paper one day and read an editorial about how the earth can’t sustain the weight of everything piled atop it and is about to simply fall off its axis (this article will probably come from this city’s alt-weekly version of Chicken Little, the New York Press). But unfailingly, they all seem to end on a determinedly non-alarmist note. Why don’t they ever close with, “In short, unless X contaminant is ceased being pumped into the air/shot into space/dumped into the river/President of the United States, we’re all fucking dead.” At least that would be honest. But it never happens. I gather this is mostly because the mainstream press prefers to soft-pedal its information rather than be straight with its readers, which makes sense from a financial standpoint; who wants to read the doomsday paper?

However, that blithe, things-will-be-alright-in-the-end attitude is very representative of this country, and I think ultimately one of its biggest strengths. It was unfortunately displayed as appalling callousness at the beginning of Katrina—there is a time and a place for everything and that was most assuredly NOT the time to whistle a happy tune, it was a time for decisive, immediate action, which we also often deploy in the worst possible situations, such as invading a country that hasn’t attacked us. Third time, I digress.

When someone you love betrays you in any way, it is the hardest, most frightening thing to try again, to put yourself out there and risk being clobbered again. At times like that, it is a very worthy and valuable thing to have a healthy sense of belief in the basic goodness of mankind, and the tendencies of things to straighten themselves out once they’ve slewed a little far right or left. Karma is part of this attitude, and also the concepts of yin and yang, not Western concepts, I’ll grant, but ones many of us recognize and relate to because they fit in with our national principles. The worst of those pie-in-the-sky beliefs manifest themselves as naivete, or worse indifference or ignorance, but I like to think of them as a necessary tool to keep us working towards the best of what we can be as a species. We reach for the stars, dream the impossible, work for peace and justice in the world, help the less fortunate, the disenfranchised and the discriminated against. And yeah, we get smacked back down a lot. But we keep dreaming, keep trying, keep reaching, because that is what we’re here to do—it is what we must strive for in the face of randomness and chaos. Order. Peace. Equilibrium. Utopia. We may never get it, but we have to keep trying for it, because our very souls vibrate with the absolute knowledge that it is the ideal. That is our greatest gift to the world—the gift of resilience, of trust, and our boundless capacity for optimism.

We are in a dark place right now; no sense gilding the lily about that. For every step forward the civil rights movement has made and continues to make, there are still bashings and murders, still malicious discrimination, still injustices wrought daily. Our constitutional protections (whatever ones we actually have left) are in grave danger, and recent events have shown us to be woefully underprepared to handle another terrorist attack. So I’m spending this fall writing angry letters. To my congressmen. To Mayor Bloomberg. To the MTA. To the pasta company whose product did not perform as advertised. Change comes when you demand it, and there’s a lot of change that needs to come. I love this city, and this country, with all my heart. I believe in its greatness and its potential to do right. So what more can I give it?

Another chance.

Yours in hagdom,

Jamielah