But I lost interest in sports and didn't get it back for a while. That World Series was a once-in-a-lifetime matchup of the two Bay Area teams, and the one I was rooting for ended up winning. I didn't even watch. I didn't even read about it. I didn't care. My apartment was a few miles from the Oakland A's home field. I wasn't inspired.
The sports-as-inspiration theme got a workout when the New York Yankees went to the World Series the month after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, but that was a little different. The vast majority of Yankees fans didn't lose their homes or anyone dear to them in the attacks. The sadness at the time was overwhelming, but most of the people rooting for the Yankees were doing it from the same couches and barstools they'd been doing it from on Sept. 10, and with the same people.
The stories about the Saints have been respectful. There's always the proper qualification -- "of course, in the scheme of things, it means nothing, but ..." -- and the Saints' players and coaches have been nothing short of excellent in the way they've deflected praise and kept the focus on the victims.
In fact, there's nothing wrong with a feel-good story. But I worry that the people who feel the way I did in 1989, who weren't inspired by the Saints' win and have bigger things to worry about, thank you very much, than drawing hope from a football game, couldn't have gotten near a TV camera or a reporter's notebook Sunday with a gun.
I worry that these feel-good stories are the first step on the road to complacency, to the rest of us forgetting about Hurricane Katrina, moving on to the next story -- say, what's up with that missing teenager in Aruba, anyway?
I don't mean that as a joke. I think the big media story around Hurricane Katrina is that the dire warnings about the dangers of flooding and disaster in New Orleans if it ever took a direct hit from a big enough storm weren't bigger news.
The levee system was waiting to fail, and that information was known. The New Orleans Times-Picayune famously predicted the destruction that Katrina has wrought back in 2002. Famously, I mean, now. The story didn't get a lot of national play at the time. I don't remember hearing about it.
We're all pretty smug in faulting the government for ignoring the warnings and letting the situation deteriorate over the years, but have we the people been holding officials' feet to the fire all that time? No. We might have if we the media had made a bigger deal about it.
Forgive me for using "we" throughout this column to mean both the media and its audience, but I'm in both groups.
And why didn't we in the media make a bigger deal about the impending disaster in New Orleans?
Because we the people don't want to hear that depressing stuff. We want little made-for-TV mysteries like Natalee Holloway and JonBenet Ramsey and a hundred others, stories that let us revel in our fear and empathy and grief, but vicariously. Give us a feel-good story at the end of the day and it's a perfect cocktail. We're ready for bed.
We don't want to hear about infrastructure, preparedness, details of budget decisions. What's the next disaster that's already in process that we're all ignoring because it's just too wonky and complicated and dull?
And why aren't we in the media insisting on telling these stories, even though they might cost us some in sales or ratings or page views? I have a healthy respect for the bottom line, but is that all we serve?
I don't know. Let's ask someone who lost their kids in the flood.
Good for the Saints for their win, and good luck to them for 15 more. Good for anyone who really did draw inspiration and hope from them Sunday. Here's hoping there's a whole lot more where that came from and there are a whole lot more of you than I suspect there are.
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive.
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