Last night I wrote a brief post about the idiot at the Chicago Tribune who wrote a stupid op-ed piece for her paper. If you missed it, please click here so I don’t have to recapitulate.

The outrage over Ms. McQueary’s ignorant op-ed piece has raged on all day on social media. The hashtag #FireMcQueary has even popped up. I don’t get it: this woman does not have the power or influence to inflict additional damage on people who were harmed by Hurricane Katrina. It’s 2015, not 2005. The recovery is not as strong as she depicted it, but we’re no longer on our knees and shouldn’t waste any more time on this stupid article. I certainly won’t.

I have the right to say this. I was in the trenches as a neighborhood leader, civic activist, and blogger in the aftermath of the storm. I fought the good fight for many years. It was sometimes necessary to correct and/or denounce erroneous statements by people who were ignorant of what was really happening in New Orleans. There’s a big difference between then and now: the idiotic statements were coming from people who could damage our chances to recover from the disaster. That’s why we jumped all over fools like Denny Hastert, Tom Delay, and other inside the beltway conservatives. They had the power to hurt us. Kristen McQueary does not.

I understand that people are raw and jittery over the impending 10th anniversary of the storm. We should, however, have a sense of perspective and proportion and not freak out because someone we’d never heard of used an inappropriate and downright moronic Katrina analogy. I would also like to point out that we’ve heard the same “clean slate” nonsense from influential New Orleanians including City Council members, powerful business people, and both post-K Mayors, Ray Nagin and Mitch Landrieu.

This whole episode reminds me why I wrote this on July, 27 as part of an Odds & Sods post:

Katrinaversary Ennui: There’s been a lot written in the local, national, and international media about the looming 10 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood. I am skipping most of it even though some of it has been written by friends of mine. I lived it and dealt with the aftermath and neither need nor want to go there again. I spent 5+ years in the trenches fighting the good fight as both a blogger and activist and the endless rehashing is of no interest to me. I remember it well.

I am equally disinterested in any of the planned public anniversary celebrations; many of which have dueling perspectives on the state of the city 10 years after the flood. One camp sees pre-K New Orleans as an Edenic place free of hispters and greedy developers. The other camp sees pre-K New Orleans as a crime ridden hell hole with blighted housing,and too many poors. Neither side is right and they’re both out to sell an agenda that I’m not buying. I lived it and remember it well.

Until yesterday, I kept to my policy of neither reading about nor responding to any articles about the event that changed all our lives in New Orleans. I *almost* regret making an exception and responding to  McQueary’s malakatude, but it had to be done. This is the last time I’m doing this.

Our current adversaries are pissants and cannot harm us in any tangible way. I want to be a semi-normal person living a semi-normal life in a semi-normal city. I don’t want to spend any more time fighting with the likes of Statehouse Chick. I’m done, and I wish everyone would put away their virtual torches and pitchforks and stop obsessing over what I called A Stupid Piece By An Ignorant Person. That’s all it is: she’s not a dragon that needs slaying. Instead, she’s a rather puny lizard of the sort your cat might leave on the mat if she had nothing better to do. We have better things to do.

It’s time to heed the advice of  Graham Parker and get over it and move on:

Our regularly scheduled programming will resume at the stroke of midnight with the latest edition of Saturday Odds & Sods. We all need a laugh after the last few days.

Repeat after me: Get over it and move on.