My favorite television program, South Park, put the Hurricane Katrina situation in perspective last night better than any news program or article I’ve read.

In its season opener, television’s most moral program n yes, despite my wife who finds it offensive, each episode has a valuable moral lesson n tackled Katrina head on.

Stan Marsh and Eric Cartman took a joy ride in someone’s boat on a South Park lake. They lost control of the boat and rammed into a large beaver dam, collapsing it.

The kids got out of there before getting caught and getting in trouble. That evening while watching the news at dinner with is family, Stan learned the town of Beaverton, downstream from the dam, was flooded as a result.

Television “reported” that millions had died, people were being raped and survivors were resorting to cannibalism. They had not witnessed any of this in Beaverton n population 8,000 n they were just “reporting” it.

There were also people stranded on their rooftops like in New Orleans.

Stan felt guilty, of course, for causing this, and wanted to help the Beavertonites. All the adults could do was try to assign blame n it was George Bush’s fault, the communists’ fault, the mayor of Beaverton’s fault and global warming’s fault.

Stan’s parents were arguing about this when Stand said, “We’ve got to do something to help those people.”

His dad said, “You don’t understand, Stan. It’s not about helping people. It’s about placing blame.”

That’s pretty heavy. I left out a lot of swearing in between, of course, but the message was loud and clear.