You remember Ray Nagin right? The mayor of New Orleans during the largest humanitarian crisis in the history of the United States? The guy who you hear in that radio clip where he starts crying and yelling at the rest of the country for not doing anything while people were dying while staring up at the sky begging for help. Her earned alot of respect for his directness and honesty during that disaster. Hell, I respected him for it.
Of course that was before I knew more about the man and what he had done with the city. Mostly nothing if you don’t count fostering curruption and fiscal irresponsibility. But still I held out hope that Nagin might be a changed man, having seen bodies of his own voters floating around face down throughout his streets. I still wanted to cheer for him… until now.
I’m done with Ray Nagin. Besides the numerous episodes that had shown he was two faced and a typical wishy washy politician, this latest appearance on Meet the Press did me in… or rather.. him in.
Anytime the man was asked if the federal government had failed him, a government that took over a week to respond, and when they finally did it consisted mostly of private contractors and overzealous military police, he refused to acknowledge it. As if someone is pulling his strings or controlling his speech, he refused to admit the the US government has a double standard when it comes to saving the lives of black people. To his credit, he did acknowledge it was a matter of class. Still, a man who once sounded unafraid to speak his mind and admit what a disaster his city had become, now he chose his words carefull, dodged criticizing anyone in particular, and pretended his city was doing rather well in terms of recovery.
Sorry Ray, you’re pathetic and I’m over you. I hope you fall into obscurety after serving your zillion terms as mayor of a city that will never recover, and will never have a leader who will push for a true investigation and trial for the crimes against humanity resulting from the neglect of the federal government, as well as that of the state and local governments.
About the only cool thing I could find in his whole interview, was when he called the site of the former WTC in NYC, a big hole in the ground and Tim Russert got all preachy and bitchy like it was a sin to say so. Of course he backed down on that one too, even though it is, when it comes down to it, a big hole in the ground.
Poor New Orleans. First Katrina. And then this fakester gets re-elected.