Ah, I love a parade.  That’s a punchline to a joke my father told me some decades ago, and it wasn’t really about a parade.  I can’t remember the joke, but the punchline has stuck in my mind as a reminder of what I think is one of the weirdest of human behaviors:  people just love gawking at horrible stuff.

A tornado struck downtown Atlanta a while back – you might have heard about it.  A tornado in the downtown of a large city is unusual and wondrous in its wrecking power.  Immovable windows were sucked out of tall buildings, trees and debris smashed the modest homes around the downtown area, and one building of loft apartments collapsed onto itself.

We saw tape from a security camera showing one of the carriage horses deciding that it just couldn’t move fast enough with that pesky carriage attached to itself, so it broke all the heavy leather straps and ran free.  Unfortunately, the news people never told us where the horse went.  The driver was interviewed after the storm passed, and he and the horse were back together.  I would have liked to have heard how he found the horse, but it wasn’t to be.

And, all of that, of course, is in addition to the roof of the Georgia Dome sortof coming off in pieces which really put a cramp in the NCAA’s plans.

All during the night the tornado first struck, and the following day, the mayor of Atlanta had been on the television asking people not to come downtown.  Why?  Because with all the glass still falling out of windows, the streets were unsafe, and additional people driving or strolling around would make the job of cleaning up much more difficult.

But, what did we see during subsequent newscasts?  People driving and strolling around downtown.  There were people taking photos with their cell phones and pointing out the more amazing pieces of damage to one another.  Had they come to help remove debris or offer assistance to people who had no where to eat or sleep?  No, just cruising from what I could tell.

I think the mayor of Atlanta should have taken a lesson from the mayor of Boston during the snowstorm in 1978 that closed the city for over a week.  He called a newscast, looked directly into the camera and said something like, “I am not asking you to stay off the roads.  I am telling you that your car will be impounded and you will be put in jail.”

Needless to say, I didn’t hear of anyone going against that “request” until the state of emergency was over.