New at Reason

David Weigel | August 31, 2006

Katherine Mangu-Ward discovers that Ray Nagin, and not that Time magazine guy, is the real America's Mayor.

Comments

|8.31.06 @ 8:25AM|#

Mangua-Ward's description of Nagin's "chocolate" comment is more than a little disingenuous. She says he was unjustly raked over the coals for informing everyone that "there are a heck of a lot of black people in New Orleans."

In fact, what he said was:

"I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day... This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

He wasn't merely illuminating an "is", he was positing a "should", and a divinely ordained one at that.

Now imagine a white politician making a similar statement about Des Moines or Salt Lake City, replace "chocolate" with "white chocolate" and "African-American" with "European-American". Are the results similarly excusable?

|8.31.06 @ 8:29AM|#

Let me get this straight - we need more Nagins in leadership positions, not because they are effective in spending tax-payer money wisely, but because they are interesting to listen to on occasion? I ain�t buying it.

|8.31.06 @ 8:40AM|#

"You guys in New York City can't get a hole in the ground fixed. And it's five years later. So let's be fair."

Bwah! He should have said it about Boston.

|8.31.06 @ 8:42AM|#

*yawn*

Excuse me. I just woke up, and that exceedingly boring and pointless article almost put me back to bed.

|8.31.06 @ 8:44AM|#

He claims God wants the city to be African-American and he's a hero??? Bush claims that he gets direction from God and he's a nut, though.

This article blew.

|8.31.06 @ 8:56AM|#

What Kohlrabi said. I think they post stuff like this not because they believe it, but because they want to stimulate debate. Which is OK.

But yeah, elected leaders who publicly give up the reins to God are low-hanging fruit. If you vote for someone who's gonna leave all the work for God to do, maybe we could just skip the elected middleman and move right to divinely-inspired oracles. Living in caves with trances, incense, the whole shebang. Now *that* would be some interesting shit to listen to.

|8.31.06 @ 8:57AM|#

Jesus man,

What's the point? Have you heard the news? Tevez and Mascherano have decided to sign for West Ham?! West Ham?! JJEESSSUUUSSSS.

I hate football. I'm going to start supporting baseball - Looks like a nice game. Which team should I support? Not the Yankees though. Or the Red Sox. I want to support an underdog.

|8.31.06 @ 9:02AM|#

Get real. Like the mayor of New Orleans is at all comparable to the Leader of the Free World.

|8.31.06 @ 9:05AM|#

Does Mangu-Ward really believe the fact that "there are a heck of a lot of black people in New Orleans" is "excruciating" (e.g., "extremly painful")? I'm not sure what it means for a statement to be "screamingly" true, and I'm not even sure the failure to rebuild the World Trade Center in timely fashion qualifies as excruciating. But I'm hard pressed to see how the demographics of New Orleans would merit that description.

|8.31.06 @ 9:07AM|#

I don't mind Nagin's incendiary comments. The WTC comment was painfully true, and sometimes it takes outrageous comments to get people's attention and, by extension, get anything done. The Chocolate City comment (yes, it's a song by Parliament) was clearly political pandering, an attempt to reassure a community that the entire City wasn't going to be rebuilt in an image different from what they people already knew. Perhaps it should be, but that's not the point. Would I vote for Nagin? Probably not. Has he helped keep New Orleans on the radar long after our collective memory usually runs out? Hard to say. I wonder though, do people in Wyoming still care about lower Manhattan?

|8.31.06 @ 9:18AM|#

Worst. Article. Ever.

|8.31.06 @ 9:28AM|#

But Ray Nagin? You cannot swim in New Orleans? You do not have gills!

reads article

Oooh, I've wasted my life.

|8.31.06 @ 9:38AM|#

One more thing, this article reinforces my suspicion that a lot of 'libertarianism' is little more than poorly disguised contrarian anti-populist personality trait. This, as a libertarian, really disappoints me. It seems like my fellow libertarians fetishize taking a counter-intuitive stance on any given topic. Dunno why. Glorifying Nagin for the very things that would be condemned otherwise is a perfect example.

|8.31.06 @ 9:44AM|#

Nagin was doing what every politician does...delivering different messages tailored to different audiences.

That exactly what the problem is! They SHOULD get raked over the coals for doing that!

|8.31.06 @ 10:00AM|#

An article by Katherine Mangu-Ward, posted by David Weigel? It's the perfect storm of stupidity!

|8.31.06 @ 10:00AM|#

"Nagin was doing what every politician does�even Nobel Prize winners like Yasser Arafat�delivering different messages tailored to different audiences."

That's right, even Nobel Prize winners like Yasser Arafat, see how can you get mad at the guy? Beat it.

I'm still mad about this. Like Russ 2000 said. Oh, and if you like pandering politicians, I have a whole list of 'em you ought to love. Since when do libertarians justify pandering, or anything, by saying "Well everyone else does it, even crackpot terrorist sympathizers."

Maybe this whole thing was a weird joke?

|8.31.06 @ 10:04AM|#

If N.O. had to find private monies to rebuild they would not be comparing their progress to that of the WTC.

dhex|8.31.06 @ 10:06AM|#

kohirabi: did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?

Jennifer|8.31.06 @ 10:14AM|#

New Hampshire is a vanilla state, and God wants it to stay that way. California's got so much Hispanic cinnamon it makes me sneeze whenever I inhale next to it. But the saffron in Chinatown is kinda nice.

|8.31.06 @ 10:20AM|#

Being a Libertarian is starting to mean; figure out what everyone is saying, then be a smartass enough to find an angle on why they are idiots for saying it. Bush is wrong, Kerry is wrong, Lieberman is wrong, Lamont is wrong, Move-On is wrong, Left is wrong, right is wrong, Hollywood is wrong, Israel is wrong, did I say right is wrong?, everyone is wrong, everything is wrong, wrong, wrong....except me.

I say forget about why everyone is so goddamned wrong for a while and just focus on what we think is right. That way, what is wrong will get worked out in the wash.

Of course, we can always just stay the cool motherfucker in the back of the class that is too smart to hang out with everyone else...and continue to get 2% of the vote and continue to be absolutely meaningless. You don�t get people to join a movement be telling them how fucking idiotic they�ve been about everything they�ve thought their entire existence.

|8.31.06 @ 10:24AM|#

Aw, dhex. Not so much! I'm trying to guess, do you ask because I'm like a devil, or do you ask because I'm so angelic I should be in heaven, but somehow happen to be here?

|8.31.06 @ 10:26AM|#

Uh, subscriber, isn't the point of the article that Nagin isn't wrong? Just a thought...

|8.31.06 @ 10:38AM|#

Lamar, by you telling me I am wrong, isn't that proving I am right? Wait, now I'm confused.......

|8.31.06 @ 10:42AM|#

After being prodded about some drowned hulks of cars still lying about, he uttered the words that kicked off the most recent round of anti-Nagin fun: "You guys in New York City can't get a hole in the ground fixed. And it's five years later. So let's be fair." Which is a pretty good point, actually.

No it isn't. The NY site was cleaned up in less than a year, the next 4 years were political back-and-forth over what to do with the site. NOLA has hundreds of abandoned cars strewn about; how the hell is there any comparison?

There may be some valid reasons why they can't get the streets cleaned - running out of places to put the junk might be a good one - but comparing it to WTC redevelopment is not a good point; it's a cop-out. Especially when one considers that even if the debris in NOLA were all cleaned up, none of the hardest-hit neighborhoods will be rebuilt five years from now.

|8.31.06 @ 10:48AM|#

Nagin wining the election is a major reason why I packed up my family and moved. He stirs up racial hatred toward whites. He won't even come out strong against the "de blow up da levee" talk. Nagin is not a leader. The black political machine in the city is corrupt behound belief (Nagin is not part of that machine, he is inept, not corupt) White's are treated like second class citizens at goverment offices. On the other hand blacks are treated the same way at some "white" establishments. There is plenty of rasicam to go around. All the warm fuzzy feelings of "we are in in this together" never came about. Instead we were left with waring classes of middle class white vs. working class blacks, and middle class blacks and hispanics cought in the middle. Generaly, it is a stressful place to live. BTW anyone want to buy my house in NOLA?

|8.31.06 @ 11:02AM|#

For me the article misses the real point. The scandal isn't Nagin being raked over the coals for what he said, it's that he's not being raked over the coals for his disastrous incompetence just before and after Katrina hit. As local authorities are the first response to a disaster he could have saved a lot of lives.

|8.31.06 @ 11:49AM|#

I was shocked to hear it had been a year now. They haven't stopped going on about it since then.

|8.31.06 @ 11:54AM|#

This article blew.
Yup. Nagin's just a bullshitting, incompetent, anti-white racist twerp.

|8.31.06 @ 11:54AM|#

Yeah, not feeling this commentary at all. Interesting comments and verbal blunders do not make up for corrupt and or incompetent governance.

dhex|8.31.06 @ 12:17PM|#

"I'm trying to guess, do you ask because I'm like a devil, or do you ask because I'm so angelic I should be in heaven, but somehow happen to be here?"

a little bit of both, really.

|8.31.06 @ 12:26PM|#

What the fuck?! Add me to the worst article vote.

|8.31.06 @ 12:53PM|#

Katherine,

If your point was to say that we could use a few politicians to show some balls and speak their minds, I can agree with that. I just don't think that Nagin is the best role model in that regard, considering his weak "delicious drink" back-pedaling.

If he'd said something like "Fuck whitey, we don't want him here!", he might have touched off a useful discussion, or not, but it would have been refreshing. Instead, he gave a half-assed retraction that satusfied no one.

|8.31.06 @ 4:37PM|#

I'm from Louisiana. My sister lived in New Orleans during Katrina. She and I were lucky to get out of New Orleans the Saturday before the hurricane hit.
And the people of New Orleans and Louisiana should be grateful about a spineless bastard who couldn't get his police force under control while they pillaged their N.O. and then fled town to Baton Rouge, who KNEW for months that he "couldn't" get the poorer residents out of N.O. and his plan was just to let people get out on their own, who had a whole fleet of buses to get his residents out of town and let them go to waste...all of that shit, and I'm supposed to be grateful for him being in office still because he says things that are interesting?

Fuck you Katherine Mangu-Ward.

Nick Gillespie, this article is a waste of internet space.
Please flush it down the memory hole.

|8.31.06 @ 4:56PM|#

Frank A:
Excellent commentary. I too was appalled that Mayor Nagin didn't personally go out and bitch slap every last cop who abandoned his post to help his own family. Clearly the confusion leading to this was all his fault. It was a dastardly deed for him to not have the resources to get people out of NO. Of course, you got out, blessed it be. And his worst fault was that he didn't use the buses that were submerged in water to get more citizens out. Even though buses don't run when they're under water, somebody could have pushed, and I hate Nagin for not making it so. Thanks, Frank, for the rational perspective.

|8.31.06 @ 5:05PM|#

Lamar

The buses were not underwater before Katrina which is when people needed to be evacuated from N.O.

Jennifer|8.31.06 @ 5:12PM|#

If you want politicians with really interesting things to say, you should encourage Pat Robertson to run for President again and then give him this magazine's endorsement. Michelle "hooray for internment camps" Malkin would also make a great politician by this standard.

|8.31.06 @ 5:15PM|#

If Mayor Nagin wants to devote his energies to saying interesting things, as opposed to actually doing something productive, perhaps he should consider resigning the Mayorship to be a radio talk show host.

Charles|8.31.06 @ 5:24PM|#

Jennifer, why not go all the way? I like a Louis Farrakan-David Duke ticket for 2008.

Jennifer|8.31.06 @ 6:02PM|#

Remember the whole "nobody expected the levees to fail"?

Remember the whole "that was a total bullshit excuse, since just about every knowledgeable engineer expected the levees to fail, and a couple years before Katrina National Geographic ran an article talking about how the next time a hurricane hit New Orleans the levees would fail and the city would be toast?"

|8.31.06 @ 6:12PM|#

Actually for at least three days before Katrina hit NO residents were being told to leave. Two days before it hit Katrina was a Cat 5 storm. Everyone new the levees could break if the city was hit. The city and state governments knew that there were people who were unable to leave.

Now look, if the city and state was run by heartless libertarians I could understand this neglect. But these were Democrats. Goddammit I thought they cared about people.

Jennifer|8.31.06 @ 6:32PM|#

Now look, if the city and state was run by heartless libertarians I could understand this neglect.

Heartless libertarians would at least have been smart enough to think "considering how expensive a school bus is, maybe we should drive them out of the city before the storm, so they do not get ruined."

And then maybe, since they were driving the buses out of town anyway, they might have let a few people ride the buses out.

|8.31.06 @ 6:50PM|#

I can't remember, did the locals know that the levee was disaster waiting to happen or was it only the Feds? I checked out www.justfuckinggoogleit.com, but couldn't find the answer.

Jadagul|8.31.06 @ 9:41PM|#

Lamar: that's actually a mildly complicated question. We all knew that if the storm hit wrong, the city could flood. But at least the people I knew were worried about storm surge going over the levees, not about the levees breaking. We were expecting to have to cut the levees apart to start draining the city.

Of course, my family is probably considerably better-informed than average. Still, I agree that Nagin should not have been reelected.

|9.1.06 @ 9:51AM|#

Excuse me, Lamar, but does it matter? Shouldn't you maybe know enough about where you live (especially a bowl-shaped city by the ocean) to actually find this out? Maybe you type it into www.maybeIshouldknowtheconditionsIlivein.com