And the hurricane goes, "do duh do duh do, do duh duh (etc.)"
I'm really sorry for this, but I've been reading the most interesting articles in the the last few issues of The New Yorker I've received...
First, Jennifer Philbin, a writer for The OC, was driving home from work one day and craned her neck to view an accident and in turn just barely tapped the Saab in front of her. There was no visible damage, but the Saab Guy insisted a week later that there was internal structural damage done to his bumper which could not be displayed through a photograph. Ms. Philbin consulted her husband, a big-time (but socially aware) LA lawyer, and he called the Saab Guy and says that they'll happily donate the $800+ invisible damage to the Hurricane Katrina relief fund in Saab Guy's name, instead of fixing non-existent damages to his car. Saab Guy won't agree. So big-time LA lawyer with a heart and his OC writing wife send out mass emails and start blogging like crazy about what a jerk Saab Guy is and within days they have hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and family and random compassionate internet folks who want to donate to Hurricane Katrina under the donation name of "Saab Guy is an Asshole." And then come the ethics questions... is it vengeance or philanthropy? Who knows. But apparently Saab Guy relented and agreed to donate all of the money to the relief fund.
And then there is this particularly inspiring passage in which a man is describing his family's escape from New Orleans, from the October 3rd issue:
"I was scared," Hays went on. "After all, we'd boosted the bus. The cop, a white guy, looked inside and saw it wasn't hot-wired. There was a key. And what did he do? He gave us a police escort and called another police escort as we left Raceland and we got the escort all the way to New Iberia. And in New Iberia an officer said to me, and I will remember this forever, he said, 'I want you to understand something. You think this is the end of life as you know it for you. But this is a new beginning. You have a lot of people pulling for you.'"
First, Jennifer Philbin, a writer for The OC, was driving home from work one day and craned her neck to view an accident and in turn just barely tapped the Saab in front of her. There was no visible damage, but the Saab Guy insisted a week later that there was internal structural damage done to his bumper which could not be displayed through a photograph. Ms. Philbin consulted her husband, a big-time (but socially aware) LA lawyer, and he called the Saab Guy and says that they'll happily donate the $800+ invisible damage to the Hurricane Katrina relief fund in Saab Guy's name, instead of fixing non-existent damages to his car. Saab Guy won't agree. So big-time LA lawyer with a heart and his OC writing wife send out mass emails and start blogging like crazy about what a jerk Saab Guy is and within days they have hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and family and random compassionate internet folks who want to donate to Hurricane Katrina under the donation name of "Saab Guy is an Asshole." And then come the ethics questions... is it vengeance or philanthropy? Who knows. But apparently Saab Guy relented and agreed to donate all of the money to the relief fund.
And then there is this particularly inspiring passage in which a man is describing his family's escape from New Orleans, from the October 3rd issue:
"I was scared," Hays went on. "After all, we'd boosted the bus. The cop, a white guy, looked inside and saw it wasn't hot-wired. There was a key. And what did he do? He gave us a police escort and called another police escort as we left Raceland and we got the escort all the way to New Iberia. And in New Iberia an officer said to me, and I will remember this forever, he said, 'I want you to understand something. You think this is the end of life as you know it for you. But this is a new beginning. You have a lot of people pulling for you.'"