ITEMS IN THE NEWS

I didn't know anybody in New Orleans.
So, I watched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with bemused curiosity.
Friday's tornado in Greensburg is different.
I'm a Real Kansan. This is personal.
You could blindfold me, stick me in the back of a car, and dump me virtually anywhere in this state, and I wouldn't be more than a 20 minute drive from someone I know.
One of those people is House Minority Leader Dennis McKinney of Greensburg, whose home was destroyed in the tornado. People around me saw me breathe a sigh of relief when I read that McKinney's wife had been in Salina at the time, and that Dennis and his family were all okay.
There were stories in the media that attempted to make McKinney out for a hero for helping to dig his neighbors out.
No doubt some right wing blogger somewhere is going to spew his hatred, and say that McKinney did it just to get the publicity.
Knowing Dennis, he was likely more than a little embarassed by the story. Publicity, politics or no, he would have done exactly the same thing.
In Real Kansas, people do for their neighbors. It's part of the culture we all grew up in.
There were others I knew who suffered damage in the weekend's storm. The same storm destroyed a business in Stafford County other friends of mine have operated for three generations.
Now, as I write this, other longtime friends of mine are suffering damages in floods in Shawnee County.
But inevitably, somebody is going to complain about the Wichita television stations breaking in to give weather warnings for any place that isn't in their neighborhood.
Get a life, cretins. Real Kansans care about what happens to their neighbors.
--R.J. Dickens