Sunday, August 15, 2004

As The World Burns To commemorate the 39th anniversary of the Watts riot, the Guardian has resurrected from its archives Alistair Cooke's 1965 report, "Causes Sought As Watts Smoulders" .  It's a relic of its age, reeking of condescension.  Take up the white man's burden: . . . the weird urban complex known as Los Angeles was said to be becalmed or cowed or smouldering, according to the colour and temperament of one's informant. . . . the most mindless orgy of race-rioting that has happened in this country since the second world war . . . . . . wherever a white policeman arrests a Negro in the United States with coloured people looking on, the chance of a shambles are acute. . . . a public demand for civil rights had nothing to do with these horrors. The last such event in L.A. was the 1992 rioting that followed the verdict in the Rodney King trial.  A favorite Pakistani restaurant of mine was burned to the ground (Yes, I know, this sounds like that Roy Lichtenstein painting with the young woman crying and lamenting, "Nuclear war?  There goes my career!") This time of year, Southern Californians are more worried about suburban conflagrations than urban ones.  They live in what Mike Davis calls an Ecology of Fear. With the temperature in the 90s and the air bone-dry, the entire region seems poised to erupt into spontaneous combustion. The area most at risk nowadays is Lake Arrowhead, in the mountains above San Bernardino, where an infestation of bark beetles has killed thousands of trees, turning them into tinder.  You might say the beetles' bite is worse than their bark. But not to worry.  Help is on the way, and not just from John Edwards.  Just when the flames are about to engulf us, California's action-hero governor will parachute into the inferno and douse the blaze with a potent blast from his well-hung hose. No Girlie Man, he! 3:10:41 PM