Spike is trying to break your heart

So my place of work supposedly honors MLK Day (more on that later), but as usual, I had to use a personal day to take the day off. We always try to have a "learning moment" on MLK day, so we chose to watch When the Levees Broke. We're still working on it (it's four hours long), but I am not exaggerating when I say that it is your duty as a citizen to watch this film.

I know, this isn't exactly breaking news -- the film came out in '06 -- but I'd been putting it off. I knew it would be heartbreaking. (I also put off reading about the Trail of Tears until last year, which is kind of shameful for a Cherokee. As a Jewish friend put it to me once, "I'm not really in the mood for a novel about the Holocaust right now, but I'll let you know." Yes, it's our duty to learn and think about these events but... you've got to be in the right state of mind to do it.) And it is.

New Orleans is the center of mutt life in America. It's known for every kind of mixing you can imagine -- racial, musical, culinary. (Need I mention that the ultimate mutt music -- certainly the greatest American music, possibly the greatest music anywhere -- jazz music, was invented there.) The result is a truly unique and wonderful place. So what happened there during and after Katrina is all the more terrible.

I'm still in the afterglow of the inauguration myself, so believe it or not, I'm trying to keep it light, but it's difficult. If you think that Obama's election means that a civil-rights movement in America is now irrelevant, or if you think that we're all "post-racial" now, please watch this film. We're not there yet. But, if you've waited this long to see this film, here's the bright side. You can use the following mantra, as we have, to keep your spirits up as you watch it:

President Obama would never let this happen.
President Obama would never let this happen.
President Obama would never let this happen.