Infinite Monkeys

Nagin to San Diego: "You're black, kettle!"

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin paid a visit to my fair city yesterday. You remember Ray Nagin, right? The modern-day Nero who fiddled for the media, railing against federal disaster response while his city -- and dozens of innocent schoolbuses -- drowned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Well now he's touring from city to city to lecture business and civic leaders on, of all things, disaster preparedness.

Well, if that ain't the Krackel calling the Whatchamacallit crunchy...

"I don't want to see what's happened to us happen to another community," spouted Nagin. A forgiving sort might actually buy into his good intentions. I, on the other hand, find it much more likely that Nagin is just creating another opportunity to take pot shots at the Bush administration and FEMA, a suspicion that is not much assuaged by Nagin's claims that, "Our federal government is not modern enough for current disasters."

Maybe that's true, Mr. Mayor, and maybe the FEMA response was sluggish and not particularly well-coordinated. Regardless, the first response is the responsibility of the local government, read "you." This was the case before and during the Katrina flooding, and it remains so today. No amount of trying to revise history under the guise of saving other local governments from your well-deserved ignominy will change that.

Perhaps this is what Nagin meant when he "urged his San Diego audience to avoid the chaos he faced by planning who would be in charge." Or perhaps he meant that complete incompetents like himself should be prepared to hand the reins over to somebody with half a clue at the first sign of trouble.

“I would ask every local and state government to take a hard look at their disaster plans," he adds. And this, at least, is some good, sound advice. Do not, he is suggesting, take your first look at said disaster plan four days after the levees break, like someone I could mention.

Considering the source, Nagin's comments are laughable; almost as laughable as the Union-Tribune's attempts to legitimize them by referring to Nagin as "mayor of what is now the most experienced city in natural disaster response." That's crap. One only gains experience at something by actually doing it, and the City of New Orleans did exactly two things in response to Katrina: jack and shit. Or does the daring way the New Orleans police force looted grocery stores and/or ran for the hills count as a response?

Sorry, Ray, but even if your warnings carried the tiniest bit of weight, they would still be unnecessary. I'm happy to say that I have confidence that our recently elected Mayor, Jerry Sanders, would respond to a major disaster in San Diego by showing poise and leadership; not by expressing panicked outrage to Geraldo Rivera in front of the increasingly rank Superdome while his constituents drown in their attics.

So kindly take your grandstanding elsewhere, Mayor Nagin. Alternately, you might consider spending some time at home. I understand there's some sort of most-extensive-rebuilding-effort-in-our-nation's-history going on there. I figure you might want to be a part of that, seeing as how you missed out entirely on mitigating the destruction that provoked it.

You know, I donated some money to the Red Cross relief fund shortly after Katrina hit, but now I really hope that it went to the surrounding areas instead of New Orleans proper. Frankly, any city that would re-elect a chucklehead like this deserves everything it gets.

Posted by Poochucker at June 30, 2006 06:06 PM