CI #56 -- Looting

With the tragedy in Haiti and the NBC late night debacle, I've been pretty busy actively mourning and hating (respectively) over the past week.

As I've read the coverage of what's going on Haiti, one bit of information has continued to stick as a lump in my throat: looting.

(Photo via NY Times)

Whether it's 1977 Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2005 New Orleans, or 2010 Haiti, looting just doesn't make sense. Maybe I'm just too naive. Maybe, like we're told in The Dark Knight, some people just want to watch the world burn -- from their free, new 32'' plasma TV!

Relief efforts are just beginning to reach all the bodies and all the survivors in need of food. And it'll be weeks before they can restore much of the country's previously terrible infrastructure. No water, no transportation, mass hysteria.

So, here's a question: What are you going to do with your free, brand new 32'' plasma TV when there's no power? What's that? Hang out and wait 'til things settle down? I hope you have a leftover Y2K bunker.

Looting is always terrible. Some people say it gave a boost to the early days of hip hop by putting so much prohibitively expensive DJ equipment in the hands of young artists. I say I love hip hop, but I've seen the pictures. It wasn't pretty.

I went to college at N.C. State during a time when, thanks to Philip Rivers and a few other NFL-bound prospects, we thought we were a "football school." How did we celebrate wins over lesser-ranked teams or ones we were favored to beat anyway? By tearing the goal posts down.

What better way to say "Rah! Rah!" than by costing your athletic department $20 grand? Nice job, everyone.

Admittedly, we all have a tiny, destructive demon in us. One Halloween with the impetuousness of youth as our only guidance, my friends and I did some things we shouldn't have.

One friend egged a house. Another friend then topped him by bashing a mailbox. And then I topped both of them by busting out the windows in a parked car.

Man, my dad was pissed. He loved that Taurus.



Nice mentality, looters. If you're going to loot something, make it food. It's a lot easier to rationalize crab legs than plasma screen TVs.