Eyes glaze over

Brentin Mock, once again, lays out the importance of the Gulf Coast to a wholly uninterested nation.

America can't afford to keep the Gulf on injured reserve for too long, though. The Gulf Coast supports a $34 billion tourism industry and supplies the nation with 40 percent of its seafood. This is a working coast of fishermen, energy producers, restaurant owners, hotel managers, shipbuilders and tour guides. The Gulf generates a gross domestic product output of $2.3 trillion each year and employs more than 20 million people.

It's not trivial for the thousands of families who make their livings on fishing, oyster harvesting and shrimp trawling. These families are black, white, Cajun, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Croatian, Mexican and more. The continuing economic and environmental damage of the BP spill has been distributed without discrimination.

The crisis of the spoiled and crumbling Louisiana coast has been ongoing for longer than most South Louisiana residents have been alive. Before the flood, even most of us had unconsciously resigned ourselves to the immutable fact of it. Since then, the only real change there is we're more likely to agree that it's more immediately frightening than it used to be. The rest of the country isn't even there yet.