Monday, May 11, 2009
81 Days Later, Life Was a Beach
Posted by Clancy DuBos on Mon, May 11, 2009 at 12:26 AM
[This is an early peek at my column for this week, which otherwise won’t be on the Web until Monday afternoon.]
Okay, now we know. Now we know exactly why New Orleans’ “recovery” is taking so long. It’s because our mayor has been disengaged from the get-go. Not just six months or a year after The Storm, but from Day One.
No big surprise there, but it’s still maddening to be reminded of it as blatantly as we were last week, when Nagin ’fessed up that, while it was kind of a “blur,” he did recall jetting off to Jamaica on Nov. 18, 2005, with his wife and children — all on the dime of a guy with a fat city contract for crime cameras that seldom worked and ran millions over budget.
Three-and-a-half years post-Katrina, we’re all weary of Nagin’s paralyzing incompetence and self-absorbed indifference. Many no longer bother to complain. They just want to move on. That’s understandable. In less than a year, we’ll have a new mayor. Hope springs eternal.
But I’ve got a few post-K rants left in me, and this one can’t be contained.
Granted, after three-and-a-half years of Nagin’s pathological narcissism, his complete and utter detachment from anything remotely resembling reality — coupled with his reckless, feckless, mindless destructiveness on a scale heretofore unimagined in American politics — most of us are numb to his administration’s pandemic inertia and his own contemptible lack of responsibility, vision and leadership … not to mention his arrogant remorselessness. I mean, you can lose it only so many times before your family and friends lock you up for your own good, right? At some point, for the sake of our own sanity, many of us became inured to Nagin’s insanity.
Then I see him saying that his trip to Jamaica — a mere 81 days after Katrina — is a “blur.” On one level, that comment echoes his ongoing “I don’t remember” shtick with regard to his freeloading vacation binges. On another level, it’s the perfect metaphor for his entire second term as mayor. Jetting off to Hawaii, Chicago, Jamaica — all courtesy of Mark St. Pierre, who, thanks to his former business partner-turned-city technology boss Greg Meffert, landed lucrative city contracts while Meffert charged the Nagin trips and much more to a credit card from one of St. Pierre’s companies — well, I can see where a guy might lose his focus.
As for the rest of us, we remember all to clearly what it was like 81 days after Katrina:
• Most New Orleanians were struggling to find a way back home, many not knowing if or when they would ever get to return.
• Thousands were slipping into post-traumatic stress worrying about — or mourning — loved ones and neighbors lost.
• Hundreds of institutions and thousands of businesses were working ’round the clock to dry out, clean up and reopen, anxiously awaiting some sign of leadership from City Hall.
• Scores of corpses lay rotting in attics, automobiles, flooded-out homes and weed-choked fields, waiting to be discovered.
• And, in our darkest hour, countless volunteers from across America poured out their hearts, opened their wallets and gave up their vacations in a spontaneous display of our nation’s greatness.
While all that was happening in New Orleans, our deadbeat, deer-in-the-headlights mayor was lounging on Jamaica’s sands, sipping some fruity drink with an umbrella in it and blithely ignoring our plight.
Eighty-one days after Katrina, while New Orleans wept, life was a beach for Ray Nagin.
It all may be a “blur” to Hizzoner now, but things are coming sharply into focus for the rest of us: There’s not a jail cell dank enough for this guy.
Comments (19)
Showing 1-19 of 19
Day 81 = November 17, 2005. Didn't write a blog post that day because I was getting ready to take Thanksgiving refuge with friends in the Midwest. Did write a post on Day 85, which contained these words: "[I give thanks] that it could have been a lot worse in New Orleans. From absolute destruction to people and businesses never coming back, the fate of the city may have taken a turn for abandonment. However, the damage and hurt was just enough for the emergence of awful secrets, lessons and hope. Everyday, I grieve for my city and its people. But, here on out, the future is all we have. If we turn out to be better, rather than bigger, humanity will have risen above nature in a healthy and sustainable manner. I am thankful for 'Onwards!'" Famous last words? Granted I left town almost four years after saying this, but still hold out hope for a not-this-level-of-dysfunctional New Orleans. It's a good thing not everyone tires at the same time in the same way.
like
dislike
On November 17 I was coming out of my grandmother's house after climbing over all of her destroyed belongings and trying to figure out what the number 1 meant on the National Guard markings. It turns out I was seven days late in finding her myself since her remains were found on November 10. If someone would have bought me a trip to Jamaica around that time I could tell you everything about it down to the name of the security guard that did my screening at the airport. He should have just admitted to it.
Sure we have regrets -- along with the rest of the 59 percent of N.O. voters who put him into office. Back then, he was the overwhelming choice, and everyone had high hopes for him. The better question is, why doesn't Nagin express any regrets for his actions ... or inactions?
On November 17 2005 I flew from New Orleans to Atlanta in preparation for driving back and taking up residence in my trailer.
On Nov. 17 I was still a resident of Fargo, N.D. planning to uproot my family (who had never lived in NOLA) to relocate them into a disaster zone, and spending 30-40 hours a week publishing Wet Bank Guide. The nearest adjacent WBG post was on a report broadcast on NPR reporting 4,000 still missing. I noted the online databases from the national center for missing persons listed 7,000. Based on that number and Mississippi's rates of dead-to-missing I estimated 1,100 people died.(I was off. The official toll remains 1557 in Louisiana, a figure that disregards thousands who died as a result of the stress or relocation). As late as January I was still supporting Nagin for the most part, having posted a defense of his '06 MLK speech in late January. If I had known he was lounging in Jamaica I would likely have changed my mind sooner. As much as we reviled the Feds, it was increasingly clear into '06 that we (or our city government) were failing ourselves. A sidenote: I waas not eligible to vote in the last mayoral election but supported Landrieu.
Clancy, With all due respect, I find your position on Ray Nagin to be waffling at best. During the 2006 campaign, you exposed his racially divisive campaign tactics as well as the BS flooded car deal and his MIA tendencies amongst other sordid problems: • Black vs. white. Four years ago, Ray Nagin set out to change the paradigm for electing a New Orleans mayor. He succeeded. Snubbing the alphabet-soup of black political organizations and leaping over the traditional racial divide, Nagin assembled a coalition based on common economic rather than racial interests. He captured the vote of the middle class -- black and white -- as well as the business and professional community. It was supposed to be a turning point in New Orleans politics, and for a while it appeared that it would be. Katrina changed that, too, by exposing racial and class divisions that haven't closed and old wounds that haven't healed. Now, even Nagin has returned to the old racial paradigm -- with a vengeance. His rhetoric and his campaign focus almost exclusively on black voters, sometimes in a manner that is openly hostile to whites, who gave him 85 percent of their votes in 2002. The question for Nagin is whether black voters will forgive him for not being "black enough" pre-K. For black voters, the question is, which Ray Nagin will show up for a second term (if he's re-elected): the "chocolate city" Nagin or the "BNOB/build-at-your-own-risk" Nagin? http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A35944 Then, right after the election, you wrote the following which was among other commentary I read/heard you give to TP and local new station interviews, giving him almost glowing praise: • One good thing about Nagin that hasn't changed is the fact that he remains a fundamentally honest and thoroughly likable guy. Another of his good qualities -- and this may spring from his "not being a politician" -- is that he has never shown signs of being vindictive. http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A36354 I have to say I was really taken aback after Nagin won with what appeared to me to be your renewed support of him after a really vicious and hypocritical mayor’s race waged by him and his campaign manager Jim ‘The Knife’ Carvin. Now you’re back to attacking him again? I watched Nagin talk out of both sides of his face from late 2005 until this very day and I came to see what a snake he truly is during that election and he hasn’t proven my characterization of him wrong yet – not once. He’s not fundamentally honest and he is vindictive. He showed that during the election season and we’re seeing it more clearly each day since – especially this year of 2009 as all his contracts BS and deleted email cover-up shenanigans are being reported. What I find troubling about your recent commentary is your selective memory and subsequent assessment (to bite off Sanitation Director Veronica White's quote, if I may) of our mayor’s leadership. What gives???
Red, Thanks for reading and responding. I would respectfully point out that the "waffling" columns you cite were actually published just 2 months apart in 2006. I wrote the first in the midst of the 2006 mayoral election and the second a few weeks after Nagin was re-elected. In each instance, I was merely trying to be fair to Ray Nagin, just as I try to be fair (and critical, when warranted) to all politicians I cover. By the time those columns were published I had already established myself as a critic of Nagin, but I still try to be fair to those I criticize. Thus, the columns you see as "waffling" were simply attempts to give the man what I thought was his due. Since then, I agree with you: he has proven himself to be vindictive. I had not seen this attribute in him before then, but it has shown itself many times since. If you saw it sooner, kudos to you. I feel that someone in my position should always strive to be fair lest he or she be written off as merely someone who "always" opposes or criticizes the mayor, the governor, whoever. I look for ways to be fair, and if that means I write things that strike you as "waffling," I hope you and others will instead recognize an honest attempt not to pigeon-hole myself as knee-jerk in opposition or criticism. Thanks again for your comment.
Day 81. Just finished chemotherapy and started radiation. Living in a too expensive rental house thinking we would get the "loss of use" money from our insurance,we did not. Paying a contractor 12k to gut and clean my house thinking we would get compensated, we did not. Planning our return thinking we would have a Mayor, we did not.
Clancy, There’s being ‘fair’ and there’s holding your ground when you’re right. You saw and commented on very disturbing actions and trends you saw in Nagin in the months just after the storm. What is running a racially divisive, means-justifies-the-ends campaign and further tearing apart our traumatized community more than it already was if not dishonest and vindictive? How was letting him off the hook for his destructive actions giving him his due? I read your columns quite a bit and I generally enjoy them so I hope you take this criticism in the spirit of feedback. You’re a political analyst not a politician. Nagin didn’t change but your characterization of him did. I expect Councilwoman Cynthia Willard Lewis to back-peddle on everything she called Nagin the day after he won, go up and hug him on election day and then vote with him on every issue as if they were one in the same person. What I hope and expect from our journalists though is speaking truth to power. I imagine as a White man it wasn’t easy to hold that position in the face of his ill gotten victory. But how are we as a community learn from these hard lessons and grow if we aren’t honest about what is really going on even when it’s not fashionable or easy to say what’s really true? He didn’t win because he was a better option. He won because he frightened Black displaced voters into believing the White folks uptown were conspiring to keep them out and demolish their neighborhoods and that he was going to somehow kick it into high gear just as soon as he could take a breath from the campaign and get this recovery on track and accelerated and them back home. Then he turned around and worked to have all the public housing complexes demolished – while we’re in the middle of a housing crisis. Simply put, he’s has continued to do the same thing he was doing before the election: NOTHING. Vacationing, being unavailable, putting lipstick on a pig and calling it beautiful (outrageous murder rate = crime cameras that turned out to be a big ruse perpetrated by his close colleagues amongst many other examples). You’re putting your foot back might have been the easier thing to do in the face of all of that discord during that time. But it undermines your credibility when you come back later and basically say you were right the first time. And you were. Sincerely Red (and a proud Black woman:)
My question is this: what forced Nagin to take the political tack of embracing a "racially divisive" campaign style in 2006 during an election when the city was effectively emptied of a large percentage of the black population? What prompted his vilification of "Uptown or wherever" during his "Chocolate City" speech when those were the folks who helped him get elected in 2002?
DAY 81 I was backpacking in the Volta region of Ghana, making claims of invincibility while under the influence of malaria pills. Good times.
Red, I totally respect your point of view. I think you have found perhaps the only column I have penned that did not totally trash Nagin. (Actually, there was one more last year.) By contrast, my columns that gutted him -- as he deserved -- are too numerous to count here. I certainly take your criticism in the spirit in which it is offered, and believe me when I tell you that I will think of you every time I write about Nagin going forward ... but I also will try to be fair. Finally, if the sum total of my "waffling" was a single column in June 2006, in which I simply cut Nagin a little slack, then I respectfully submit that all I was doing was trying to be fair. Ultimately, I don't want to become pigeon-holed as "The Anti-Nagin." My comments were rooted in a sense of fairness. I have not waffled or wimped out on criticizing him before or since -- and if I do, please let me have it! (smile) Finally, I enjoy your blogs!
day 81 i remember having to bunk at my job in da 1/4's. i remember driving past fresh faced kids with machine guns with a photoshopped boh brothers pass on my dashboard, so i could board up the window that the guard kicked in while looking for bodies, because rita was coming. i remember those kids telling me not to be on the street after dark. i remember my wife was living with friends in houston. i remember spending every sunlit hour off work re-wireing and plumbing underneath my house so we could move back in when the power came back to our block. it came back on mid december. we live in a rasied cottage on brick piers on the gentilly terrace and the water stopped 6 inches from the floorboards. every thing under the house had to be replaced. i remember every lunch that the red cross van brought to the block and each driver. i remember the grey crud on every thing and the first time i saw something green come out of the ground. mr nagin most my elderly neighbors are dead now. i really wish i could make that a blur. good luck to you sir.
Clancy, I'm just rereading this piece (on WWL actually) and I have to say, you nailed it! Especially the part about rotting corpses everywhere and the scores of volunteers that felt compelled to be here even when our mayor didn't. I remember feeling like the city had 1st degree burns on it, feeling so raw from trauma that we were crying at the drop of a dime for the least little things it all hurt so bad. pulling over the car cause I'm crying so hard I can't see anymore. Watching someone at the bank lose it cause they overdrawn and everyone in the bank line crying right along with him. I wish it were a blur. I wish I could erase all those memories from my hard drive. They haunt me still, are still screwing up my mind and my life. Thanks Clancy. Again, not trying to clown you at all. I'm just so furious at the so called mayor for snatching the election for himself so he could squander it while we sit here still fkd up over it. I will never let him off the hook for the way he stuck the knife harder into our backs. Screw him!
Around Day 81, I was trying to explain to Geico that I had no idea of where my car was, as it had gone under the 30+ foot storm surge in Bay St. Louis, and was arguing with Allstate about whether our house would be declared a total loss or not, after being assigned to our 3rd or 4th adjustor. Good times. I think I would've preferred Jamaica.
Recovery is taking so long because of imbeciles like you. You are the epitome of socially backward media. In face of all the obvious race motivated attacks on Head, you ask her to apologize? The greatest service you could do for New Orleans is leave. We a filled to the gills with spineless reporters willing to bitch slap the remaining 45 white people in New Orleans. Keep giving your papers away. No one with a brain stem would buy your drivel.
Recent Comments
-
Re: Interview: Willie Robertson of A&E's Duck Dynasty
I really love the show and at this time of morning, I just posted on…
-
on May 22, 2012
via mobile
-
Re: More reality TV shows to embarrass Louisiana
There isn't anything embarrassing about Louisiana(well, our education system n politics but there getting better),…
- on May 21, 2012
-
Re: WDSU: Hedge-Morrell will return for next Council meeting
Doesn't Mitch keep veto power thanks to morrell and johnson? (5 needed to override a…
- on May 21, 2012
-
Re: Book your favorite movie at a local theater
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6FXurcdaf0 - Josh Stover introduces the crowd to NOLA's first Tugg event.
- on May 21, 2012
-
Re: Foodies opens on Julia Row
Dinner of Thai Wrap and side salad was delicious, the best Cappuccino that I have…
- on May 19, 2012
-
Re: The artist's mother
Thank you, Salena. I appreciate your comments, especially after viewing your dedicated and proficient blog…
- on May 19, 2012
- More »
