A Slow, Hard Return To What President Harding Might've Called "Normalcy"

The blogosphere is still rife with chatter over Hurricane Katrina, the cleanup, and the political torrent it created, but if you looked at what sorts of things BlogPulse returned today, you might be a bit encouraged. Our top link isn't about a political gaffe or a Gulf Coast horror story — no, it's about Apple's new iPod. Rather than a jeremiad against the laggardly Federal Emergency Managment Agency, our no. 2 blog post is a jeremiad against Al Franken. And our key phrase? It's about the iTunes-compatible phone. (Some prodigious drooling is done on our Entertainment Blog today about Apple's new toys.) So you see that even with the monumental work still to be done down south, the blogosphere, at least, is getting back to its old self again. If only lives and cities could so quickly and easily recover.

Still, The Outrage Continues
Bloggers may be excited over new gadgets and the enteral war between the left and right, but they're continuing to castigate the Bush Administration for its disaster preparedness, or lack thereof. Our no. 15 link is a column by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times that bloggers are noting is uncharacteristically strident: "Friedman is furious," writes EdCone. "His studiously even tone breaks in today's column." Right below it remains the link to former First Lady Barbara Bush's remark that the Astro- and Superdome evacuees of New Orleans were poor anyway, which continues to turn some bloggers red: "Barbara Bush's Marie Antoinette impression yesterday made me feel pretty queasy." Readers should be warned there are a lot of impolite epithets directed towards Mrs. Bush on the citations page.

Not That It Needed Anything Else To Be Known As 'The Left Coast'
Bloggers also are talking today about the passage in California of the nation's first law legalizing same-sex marriages — up until now, such rules have come from judges. The story appears several times in our top links and top news stories today, and has generated the predictable range of opinions. Referring to a 2000 referendum that would've banned exactly what the legislature has enacted, this blogger writes: "Quite bluntly, if this is allowed to stand, the very notion of government of the people, by the people, for the people will have perished in California." Pandagon responds to anti-gay marriage critics: "I've simply decided that anti-homosexuality is an illegitimate irrationality. Their right to 'not be offended' trumps all other rights in society." This would further seem to indicate the blogosphere is returning to normal, because, as before, bloggers don't seem even close to resolving this issue to everyone's satisfaction. Have polemics ever sound so sweet?