taking every opportunity to bully the freaks

So, I guess some report was just released citing improprieties in the distribution of aid money by FEMA post-Katrina. I keep hearing about it on NPR and I saw blips about it on the internet news engines. Of course it sucks that aid money was misappropriated and given out to the wrong people for the wrong things by the inept bureaucracy of FEMA, but I can't help but notice something troubling. I saw this highlighted on the internet and just now I heard it again on NPR: some guy in his thick, Southern accent, was listing off all the shockingly inappropriate things the misappropriated aid money was actually used for, including gambling and trips to strip clubs. I was braced and sure enough, he saved the best for last. "And get this," he said, pausing for effect. "This money was even used to pay for a sex change operation." With heavy emphasis on these last three words. As though a sex change operation is the height of frivolous, lecherous luxury, a thousand times more wasteful and debauched than gambling and strip clubs combined.

Ok, yes, I appreciate that sex changes seem exotic and titillating and are certain to get people's attention. I also appreciate that sex change operations were not necessarily what FEMA had in mind when it handed out post-Katrina relief money. But fuck, have a heart. When I think of somebody scamming FEMA for money for a sex-change, I don't think of some fat-cat, opportunist laughing all the way to the nudie bar, I think of somebody in genuine physical and psychological distress who is too poor to privately fund an operation that virtually no insurance on earth would cover, grasping at the best and likely only opportunity to come along. Jesus, it's not like this person (whoever he or she may be) got the FEMA check and said "Sweet! My FEMA check! What's the most wasteful, crazy, fucked up thing I could do with it?? I know! I'll get a frivolous and unnecessary sex change operation! Awesome!!"

I mean, really.