In a serendipitous bit of visual parallel as I was visiting New Orleans the other weekend, at a seafood house not far from the Superdome, itself memorably inundated by Hurricane Katrina, the television above the bar was showing images of an inundated Midwest: Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, swamped by the Mississippi and its tributaries, crops obliterated, levees breached, Main Streets submerged, dozens of deaths, billions in damages.

The people of the Midwest deserved this.

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. Somebody had to say it.

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Those of us whose lives and homes weren't washed out to Lake Pontchartrain by Katrina suffered in more subtle ways, primarily via the punditocracy's favorite parlor game, Pin The Blame on The [Insert Scapegoat Here]: Where was the federal government on this one? Where was FEMA? Where was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? State government? City government? Mayor Ray Nagin? Say, where was the Fifth Ward Democratic chairman? Does Michael Brown's shirt look OK? Do you think he should maybe roll up his sleeves?

All of this is unsavory enough (necessary though it may be to the process of political catharsis), but if you're going to play the blame game right -- I mean really play it right, talk-radio style -- at some point you gotta Pin The Blame on The [Victims]. Why were they living in New Orleans in the first place, a submerged bowl of a city, knowing that it's going to be hit with another hurricane at some point? Why should the government spend billion after foolish billion to rebuild this (aforementioned) submerged bowl of a city if it's just going to be wiped out again? Why reward stupid urban planning? Why did those left behind disobey the mandatory evacuation orders? I bet they were waiting on their welfare checks to arrive in the mail before leaving. And why were they such lousy swimmers?

God punishes lousy swimmers (see Genesis, chapters 5-9), and he also punishes gays, hedonism, heathenism, and cities that have abortion clinics.

A September 2005 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club noted that "a number of possessions left behind suggest the mind set of some of the evacuees ... They include this voodoo cup with the saying, 'May the curse be with you.' " A Texas preacher reported that "New Orleans flaunts sin in a way that no other places do." (Except for maybe Sin City.) "They call it the Big Easy. There are 10 abortion clinics in Louisiana, five of those are in New Orleans. They openly practice voodoo and devil worship in New Orleans."

(They also openly practice public urination in the streets of New Orleans. Wonder if He's steamed about that, too? Thou Shall Not Take A Whiz Just Anywhere You Please.)

Repent America, a particularly grandstanding group of Evangelicals and no fan of the gays, said it's not a coincidence that Katrina struck days before New Orleans was going to celebrate Southern Decadence, the city's annual gay pride festival: "The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter was flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets. We're calling it an act of God."

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Iowa is a white-bread, God-fearing, corn-husking, alfalfa-chewing place. But did you also know that Iowa has numerous Planned Parenthood abortion clinics? Including one right along the Iowa River in Iowa City? And another in downtown Des Moines, which also was flooded? Doesn't that seem suspicious to anybody?

Just me?

OK, just me.

And what of all the Illinois and Missouri towns that were flooded up and down the Mississippi River? You probably didn't bother to check, so I'll do it for you -- yep, both states have like a thousand gay and lesbian support groups. And wouldn't you know it, Chicago's gay pride festival just happens to have been scheduled for last weekend. And PrideFest St. Louis, the biggest celebration of its kind in the entire Midwest, also corresponded with the floods.

God seems to have impeccable comedic timing. Maybe He really is George Burns.

But let's leave God out of this for a minute. Why did the Midwestern victims risk living in a flood zone in the first place? Isn't that just the height of irresponsibility? The Mississippi River has been flooding for millennia. Shouldn't they have seen this coming? Wasn't there an awful round of floods just 15 years ago? Typical entitlement mentality -- they know it's a dangerous place to live, yet they expect the rest of us to pick up the tab when their towns are wrecked and levees are topped.

Why should my tax dollars subsidize their stubbornness?

Why are rescue workers retrieving the stranded by boat and helicopter? Didn't these people have the common sense to evacuate before the floods came?

Why ...

Hey, where's everybody going? Nobody wants to play along? Right, sorry, forgot -- Blame The Victim is more fun when the victim is poor, gay or black. The man who happens to be all three, God pity him.

Or smite him. Either way.