Although the ninth ward did have poverty and a high crime rate, it also had a high number of working poor. They are good decent people who take care of their homes and do the best they can. Many didn't have insurance, it's a very sad time.

I just saw a bit about the gay privacy student on TV. If the school had a policy, written or unwritten, about making out (do they still call it that?) in the halls then they should have called her parents, if, and only if, they also call the parents of hetrosexual students who are showing PDAs. I got the impression from the TV that they were not, in fact, enforcing this unspoken rule among the hetrosexual couples.