<p>Hershey, Pennsylvania is very displeased.</p>
<p>great political cartoon in the local paper…ater he says that NO should be ‘chocalate’, a little girl asks if she can have hers with “no nuts”. LOL</p>
<p>Now that is too funny…</p>
<p>Simba, I’m with you…this is the kind of nutcase statement you’d ordinarily associate with Pat Robertson or one of the other American ayahtollahs.</p>
<p>Reeze confused me for a moment.
I was wondering what a discussion of President Bush was doing here.</p>
<p>TheDad: You are in very dangerous zone by being with me. I have heard brother Dobson and that guy in Colorado Springs on 60 mins. that people of my kind are GOING to hell for sure.</p>
<p>(I personally wouldn’t mind. I am sick of dealing with them in this life. They are definitely going to heaven. I don’t want to be haunted by them in after life).</p>
<p>Can you imagine a white mayor saying, “we want this town to be a vanilla town!”…the NAACP would be all over it.</p>
<p>TheDad and Simba, I take good note of your heart-warming forgiveness. </p>
<p>Now, would you sing a VERY different tune if Nagin were an elected republican? Hell no! You’d be all over his black back and accuse him of having a giant responsibility for the madness in NOLA. Oh wait, he DOES have a responsibility. </p>
<p>It does not matter if Robertson spews similar nutcase statement on a regular basis, people do not pay heed to his “leadership” unless they want to. Nagin was an elected official … subtle difference. </p>
<p>No matter how you slice it, the guy is a lunatic and was totally inefficient before, during, and after the cataclysm. Even a city such as New Orleans deserve better. Well, kinda!</p>
<p>My first response to hearing Nagin’s remark was “Why is this nut one of ours?” Rare enough. The Dems are not the party of the would-be ayahtollahs.</p>
<p>I believe the Democrats have run more guys with Rev. in front of their name in recent years than the Republicans - The Reverends Al and Jesse come to mind. And as far as ayatollahs leaving the pulpit and involving themselves in politics I will note that it was the The Horoable Rev Bob Drinan D-Mass who introduced the bill to impeach Nixon in the House. </p>
<p>The dems have been no shier in invoking God’s will as a justification for their political preferences than the repubs. Clinton carried the biggest freaking bible around I have ever seen, especially when he was catching hell for shagging the help. Folks who live in glass houses etc etc</p>
<p>That should have been Honorable Rev Bob Drinan. Didn’t mean Horrible.</p>
<p>Xiggi: don’t twist my words. I wrote," Nagin can also make fool of hemself"…are they kind forgiving words?</p>
<p>I’m afraid everyone is just going to have to ignore Mayor Nagin’s little misstep. He is just trying to get a some political mileage out of a tragic situation. As a Native Texan who has lived a large part of my adult life in Louisiana and having graduated from a large Louisiana university, and having worked for years in public accounting auditing various state and local government entities in Louisiana, I can attest to a couple of things… </p>
<p>Blacks and whites get along very well in Louisiana. Racism is too much work and would get in the way of a good time, so most don’t bother with it…except for a few politically-minded goofballs on both sides of the aisle. Everyone else (black and white) in Louisiana just ignores the goofballs. I guarooonteee the whites in Louisiana could care less about the ‘chocolate NO’ comment. Nagin was just reassuring what is left of his base, not trying to offend whites. Unfortunately, he didn’t come off as a genius while doing it.</p>
<p>Also, my experience is that there is a bit of fast and loose going on in most branches of the government in Louisiana. I don’t think most people are the least bit embarrassed about it either. Until the tragedy of Katrina, most just accepted it, with a bit of perverse pride, as the way things are in Louisiana. Hopefully, now we can expect a serious examination of the corrupt city levee boards and the inept state and local government. The consequences were just too huge this time.</p>
<p>And off topic/for the record, I live in Houston now. There has been a lot of noise about our crime rate soaring due to the large influx of NOLA residents. We just received our area crime report made to our HOA…and the truth is our area crime rate is at a five year low. Just had to put that out there.</p>
<p>Just saw over morning coffee the “Willie Nagin and the Chocolate Factory” bumper stickers and t-shirts.</p>
<p>They would make a nice layering piece with the t-shirts I saw in the French Quarter while there: “FEMA - the new four-letter F word.”</p>
<p>LDMom, your post closely reflects my observations of the realities. Have to admit, I lived in NO briefly as a small child–little known fact about TheDad: he went to kindergarten and first grade in New Orleans–right after things like separate drinking fountains for Whites and Colored in the schools had been eliminated. Certainly, it was extremely race <em>conscious</em>. But whether partying or enjoying the fruits of corruption, NO seems to have moved to, if not colorblind, focusing more on the color of money and whiskey.</p>
<p>TheDad! Agree completely! </p>
<p>And I have to admit I have a very soft spot in my heart for Louisiana…I’ve told my husband, when we retire, we will move back. I would have loved for my d to attend Tulane; we were very torn about our decision to have her focus on other colleges. She wanted Tulane for the tropical medicine studies and we knew she would fall in love with NO. But, we were too concerned with the state of health care and infrastructure. Safety was never our concern, but we worried that if she became ill or had any medical emergency, she would be stuck in an ER for 8+ hours. There are very few fully operating hospitals and they are very understaffed. I feel a bit like a traitor, but there is always grad school I guess.</p>
<p>LDMom, well, I might visit again someday…though I fear that the rebuilt NO is going to be a gentrified Disney-version of the real thing…but I would never live there again for two reasons: the days of 98 percent humidity and the fact that I would have to spend far too much energy swimming “up stream” in certain dimensions instead of being happily and productively engaged.</p>
<p>Yep Dad…you are right. </p>
<p>Most people don’t realize what is behind Nagin’s comments. There is a very concerted effort among developers to create a ‘new’ New Orleans, one that doesn’t have place for former residents who are poor. It’s a pretty insidious effort that began almost immediately after the levees failed and that will ultimately disenfranchise many former NOLA residents. If I lived in NO, I wouldn’t vote for Nagin, because I think he is incompetent, just as Kathleen Blanco is incompetent and old ‘Brownie’ is incompetent. But I will defend the man on the ‘chocolate’ NO issue. He was not making a racist comment, rather sending a message to the developers with whom he has been at war for the last few months; and to his constituency, many of whom have lived in NO for generations, and who fear they won’t be able to afford to live in the new New Orleans.</p>
<p>LDMom, yeah, Nagin’s choice of words was clumsy and infelicitous but the gentrification problem is going to be real. The difference between who makes money outta this and who doesn’t is going to be stark.</p>
<p>Nagin didn’t say that the New New Orleans should make room for the return of it’s displaced black and brown population. He didn’t point to the fact that current redevelopment plans work to exclude of as many of the aforementioned as possible. He said capital G<em>O</em>D wanted a “Chocolate New Orleans”, and that “GOD” was pi$$ed off at America and New Orleans. I just had to shake my head. Prior to this, I had hoped that Nagin wasn’t quite as addle-brained as he appearred during the Katrina crisis. Now I’m afraid that there’s no other conclusion that can be reached. </p>
<p>Personally, I was somewhat offended by Nagin’s words. I just hate it when black leaders say things that would be racist in the mouths of anyone else. George Wallace, also, was only trying to “reassuring his base” when he declared, “Segregation today. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever”. Blackness doesn’t afford one an automatic pass to say racist and insensitive things.</p>