Pay no attention and maybe it will go away

WASHINGTON - New Orleans lost out in the competition to host one of the 2008 presidential debates Monday after the commission that selects the sites decided that the city has not sufficiently recovered from Hurricane Katrina to handle such a major event.

(Times-Picayune)

Among New Orleans' failings, according to Frank Fahrenkopf Jr, the commission's R co-chair, are "press facilities, broadcast logistics such as sight lines, and security," although don't get him wrong, he loves New Orleans, some of his best friends are New Orleans. But Oxford, Mississippi has, presumably, better sight lines and besides their bid was better, so that's where the first debate will be - followed by Nashville, TN and Hempstead, NY, with the vice presidential debate in St. Louis and alternate sites in Danville, KY and Winston-Salem, NC.

I don't know why they need alternates unless they're worried one of those other places gets itself unrecovered between now and then, which would be embarrassing to the max.

All sites west of the Mississippi River are apparently also unrecovered, as are most in states not named Mississippi, Tennesee, Kentucky, or North Carolina. I don't know where to put Missouri in all this - I've been in St. Louis several times and read about Hannibal, of course, but I don't know much about the rest of the state. I met a girl called Candy once, though, from Missouri who called it Misery.