Quintessential Doug Giles: Today's "Must Read"

Imperative reading for those thinking that the Big Easy, and other communities along the Gulf Coast were wiped out by God because of His disgust with the area. Be careful if you tend to think in those terms. Here's the "go to" piece of the day to set you straight if you play the "we're better than they are game."

Here's a little morsel of Giles' wit and wisdom:

Hey, lunatic-fringe-self-proclaimed-prophet-of-gloom—can you please stop with the “God struck down New Orleans because of Mardi Gras and Biloxi because of their gambling” blather?

With that line of reasoning, how would you explain the hurricane that leveled Pensacola last year? Pensacola is no South Beach, nor does it have a Bourbon Street. In fact, I don’t think you can find a city in the US that has more churches per capita than Escambia County, and yet they got the blunt end of the pool cue eleven months ago.

Go figure.

Look, I realize that drunken college girls flashing their chests for beads and grannies blowing their social security check playing the slots like a monkey on crack doesn’t fall under the things that God likes, but if I were you . . . I’d be really slow to dole out the, “this is why that happened” diktat.

And why should one harness a condemnatory tongue?

Well, first of all, even the best of us as individuals and greatest of cities do creepy stuff that warrants (if God punishes everyone with natural disasters) either an earthquake, a tidal wave, possibly a meteor shower, multiple lightening strikes, a locust plague, a drought, rivers of blood or another JLo movie.

And for those people and cities that do not do such overtly despicable things as the rest of us who live in the big metro areas, don’t get too proud of your supposed level of sanctity.

“Why not?” you ask?

Great column! Be sure to read the whole thing