A Long Ode to the New Orleans Mayor Mr. Tell It Like It Is Nagin

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 12:57

I sing a song here of a long Ode if you will to the Mr. Ray naggin’ Nagin the Mayor of Old Orleans the newest Atlantis. However, this story begins in the suburbs of a nation marooned behind TV sets and huge TV meals whose leisure time is spent sitting in expressway traffic babysat by dubious radio voices….

You know as well as anyone the consequences of bad breeding and suburban isolation with too much weird health and wealth and happiness religious influences from the self proclaimed Angels of the right wing as much as I do. Certainly my life as much as anyone else in North America has been victimized by this dark side of the American Dream so I am inclined to write out my frustration with living with that difficult legacy so as not to go completely crazy. I confess, I am jealous of anyone who can write in modern American English scathing words against the insulated politicians of today like Mike Davis and his essay ‘The Sidelining of Blacks” can write. At least I read (red) his old essay which wasn’t exactly the easiest thing for me to do or find online either! Yes I am ashamed to confess that… but I read (reed) and try to read (reed) and even surprise myself by what I have read (red). I wish I were the kind of writer who could make such a difference as this heroic writer Mike Davis but then not so many people read (reed) today anyway. You know everyone is stuck in traffic these days so they have to be read (red) to by the likes of scary conservative agenda for profit talk show personalities – In much the same way that Cuban cigar rollers get read (commie red) great literary works to while they work making the worlds best cigars by hand. Like Americans get read (red) to by populist media personalities so no one gets to read (reed) all that great alternative news information that is actually available around the world via the internet. You can’t exactly read (reed) a great book while driving or riding in a car. Try finding audio books that aren’t hacked up in abridgements – the likes of which you can be certain our boy George junior spent his summer vacation “reading” by being electronically read (red) to by seriously abridged audio books. Do you really think he or his wife at least read (red) every one of those 1,500 pages of summer reading he set out to on his own do you? What with the likes of the ghosts of American soldiers who died in Iraq scratching at the door like the poet Poe’s big black subconscious crow? While Cindy Sheehan camped outside the gates of the vacation ranch with the ghost of Casey and others like him do you think that president read any of those books himself?

After reading online today and hearing the news from the BBC World Service about the new Supreme Court nomination by Bush junior I feel sincerely suicidal. It doesn’t seem enough anymore to just apply for a passport to somewhere else to get away from the states. Personally I am looking into a Belgian, Pakistani or Yemeni passport as a ticket out of the ongoing Bush nightmare. This whole Katrina disaster and the failed government’s contribution to the suffering of good people have left me really down right sick and depressed. There isn’t a news report on the Gulf (the other one in North America not “the Gulf “ over there by Iraq) that doesn’t hurt to see regarding the suffering and humiliation the people in the South are having to pay for the sins of the Bush administration with their lives and homes. Plus that whole added sideline in the news that when someone is looting they are young and black but if they are dying of dehydration and exposure they are old and white. I mean you see there is now not so long a distance anymore from South Africa of the recent past to the USA of today.

I mean I thought I was through with my addiction to Americana but I forgot about the irresistible charm and enchantments of New Orleans. The idea of this grand old Dame of an American city really being gone submerged just under the surface of the water is heartbreaking. Even under water the drowned corpse of an aged urban Ophelia has a haunting beauty and elegance few cities in North America can hope to be as beautiful as while still alive and thriving. New Orleans is past tense as in good Old Orleans as she most certainly is has just had the effect on me as if Bush jr himself (and not Katrina the Hurricane) had somehow reached in and ripped my heart out, squeezed it and then thrown it away. To have to see Clinton standing with the two Bushlings on TV is equally upsetting. I am sorry but I always thought Clinton was really conservative when it came to political ideologies (not that he had a choice) but it was the best we could hope for at the time. I just think there is a divide worth defending in the states and Clinton was wrong to be seen with those two GOP father and son monsters. Better Clinton align himself with the Heroic tell it like it is New Orleans Mayor named Ray Nagin and the good and humble home building Jimmy Carter than the profiteering off global suffering Bushlings – that was wrong and unforgivable of Clinton and cannot be defended as above politics. Nothing is not political when it comes to a Bush, period - end of sentence - as Mother, God rest her soul, would say! Clinton the last heroic American President was clearly wrong in this gesture to be seen with the devils incarnate Bush Jr and Sr. Everything is again wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

And where the fuck is that new Nazi boy Hitler’s Youth Pope? New Orleans is the heart of Catholic American mythology…. Is there not even a statement from the Vatican on behalf of all those New Orleans Catholic parishes under the curse of God for having been meddling in Voodoo? Where is anyone – where is Anne Rice? Her recent New York Times article titled Do You Know What It Means Lose A City Like New Orleans was hardly a fitting obituary to her grand home town but I guess it was all she could get the papers to publish: Better that insufficient New York Times obituary than nothing for which we are all thankful to read. But I doubt her and her son Christopher stayed behind and camped out with provisions in their fab Garden District home – sadly I wish they would have done so because I want someone else to admire as much as I have the heroic New Orleans, “tell it like it is fearlessly to the powers that be”, Mayor! Where are all those white Southern Baptist preachers who would go on secret sin weekends in New Orleans to get barebacked by some rough trade Black Stud fresh out of Lil’ Kim’s toaster? Where are the capacities to start up a new Berlin airlift – it only takes some ploughs brought in by heavy military planes to clear out a make shift runway and set up all that. Why is the pathetic post Katrina rescue operation so bent on busing out blacks to a dubious concentration camp in Texas of all places? Keep in mind Texas is the capital punishment capital of the world so we should all be worrying about what the final solution is for the poor black southern refugee question.

Is the solidity and security of the states that much of an illusory layer that can be blown away by a storm that has been predicted as long as anyone in America can remember? Is the strength of the states that much of an illusion that like the often repeated TV news image of rescuing one family from the roof of their inundated home by helicopter while the old shingles which survived Katrina were blown off the neighbors house by a rescue chopper? Bush ain’t gonna pay for a new roof for that guys chopper de shingled roof that is for sure! Mark my word as those shingles were blown away one by one we will see what we take for granted in America being blown away…. New Orleans was just one shingle, the WTC buildings a few others, what are the next big unimaginable pillars of our country to be swept away as if it were loose paper like roof shingles? Anything now is possible and imaginable when it comes to the destruction of the American dream and illusion of permanence thanks to the Bushlings.

Jesssus, whenever I hear Bush talk, everything and I mean everything, he is scripted to say, an unable to read even after five years of teleprompting, can be seen through – his lying is as obvious as is his personal for Halliburton profit agenda… You can bet he and his henchman and Condi with all her new Imelda Marcos shoes will rebuild the redneck Riviera and the Old Orleans in such a way to fit their financial interest above the needs of we the people. They might as well just call it Las Halliburton and be done with it – that would at least be the first honest thing this son of a Bush bitch administration have done. I want to turn on the radio tomorrow and hear a sobbing Condi begging for forgiveness for her treachery to the poor African Americans now homeless by going back herself to the stores she was shopping at and returning in humiliation all her shoe shopping exploits from the day Katrina paid a visit to the states! We want to see the real Americans caught in New Orleans that day to see Ms Rice returning her shoes as the nation in one collective effort hurls the shame she deserves for this stupid shopping expedition while the nation she is sworn to serve and protect suffered.

It is only all too obvious the Bushlings agenda on the necessary further evacuation of New Orleans… It can then be made to be like Iraq with only embedded “journalists” so that no one can contradict this administrations lies. And they aren’t even good at lying anymore nor are they convincing. My god retail laborers working on this past “labor day” can get fired for any reason in today’s conservative economics but any slacker at FEMA has an unimaginable job security that even the Bush Jr administration would be jealous of. (Yeah, I’m from Ohio we like to end our sentences with a preposition, thank you).

Really this is just heart breaking… New Orleans was the only desirable place in the US because she was the most Un-American place left in the states. Where is God? Why didn’t the storm sweep away this nasty administration and all their judges in the Supreme Court? Let us all pray each in our own way for a catastrophic Act of God to go directly to Washington, DC’s Capitol Hill to usher in instant Karma for this administration’s sins (to name but a few) of lying, greed, and neglect.

I am not good at praying but I ask Allah Almighty God to get a clue and use his power to cut through all the Bushlings insulated layers of wealth and security to first bring shame to these men and women and then hasten their death. This is my prayer at the moment! Why? Why? Why is it always the poor and the black who seem to suffer the most on this planet from a seemingly predetermined divine act when guys like Bush cruelly profit off of their loss? This is why I feel suicidal. It is not hard to fathom why suicide bombers do what they do. Take someone who is so down about “man’s inhumanity to man” and then you can easily seduce them into thinking they can make a difference with a bomb. This is the sad consequence we are making in the world we are at present so blindly determined to shape with our foreign policies. Why is it Nine – Eleven which I still haven’t recovered from didn’t see Capitol Hill taken down? Why haven’t we seen Air Force One and all its decoys taken down? Why is it on that Nine Eleven morning Atlanta’s CNN siren like mouthpiece of propaganda was not taken down….? Why is it when the Pentagon was hit we the people thought like new radicals, well, you get what you give? Why is it always the good if not poor people who are turned into powerless pawns by the world’s cold hearted people – whether Un-Islamic Islamist extremists or Democratists (yeah new word get used to it) like the Bush familia?

Why after all this occupation are we still calling Iraq full of “insurgents”? Is the dictionary definition (as if God almighty wrote the Oxford English Dictionary himself and sent its many volumes down to humanity) of an “insurgent” those who rise up against those in power. But those in power in Iraq are foreign occupiers. People caught in lands with unjust occupiers need a new word coined for those who rise up to liberate themselves from foreign tyranny. Just like the US is occupied at present by the Bush dynasty, their henchmen and accomplices in the administration and around the nation and world: We the people of the United States must rise up like Iraqi insurgents and take back our country from the humiliation of the failed Bush jr administration. If we the people of the United States don’t get rid of these Bushlings then Bin Laden and co might go down in history as decent Arabian men who tried to liberate the good American underdogs from a 21st century styled King Leopold the Second over lording his private colony the massive Congo of a previous long forgotten age.

I don’t understand it I’m raking my brain to understand and I just don’t. As much as I hope for a new country to emerge out of all of this right winged crap I know it won’t happen but what I do think can happen and fear happening is, that the strength and the security of the states is an illusion and it’s the likes of the Bushlings who will more than any other threat on the planet wipe away the country we have known to be home. And if it does get wiped away you know all those Bushlings will run off to some historical safe haven in Argentina to go live with Eva and Adolph and their descendents in the don’t cry for me Madonna’s Argentina of a South American high security Israeli settlement compound commune.

Well the one optimistic side to all this craziness is that I end up looking a helluva lot less crazy headed than I used to in these crazy days in the West! I force feed myself anything to make me laugh – graphic novels, cartoons, on-line jokes, anything, talking back to the TV and radio has helped considerably. More and more whenever I see and hear Bush jr I laugh and point the finger. He might do everything like a cheap modern version on an Edna Ferber character from the book GIANT big but he fucks up even bigger. Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas! If his fuck ups weren’t spelling Anarchy for his own nation – causing death and suffering for real human citizens – it would be a funny sort of history. I mean the President cannot get his face and what he says at any time in public to co-ordinate. He cannot read a teleprompter worth shit. God it’s time like these that as much as I might have disagreed with Clinton who is still a Hero in my mind that I miss Clinton doing what a leader should do: No matter what the crisis of the nation or his personal life scandal, Clinton could stand before his people and assert his calming presence even over the electronic services to help the people he served. This Clinton caliber character is the president we need now to clean up Katrina and clean up the selfishness of the American Military ego in Iraq. We need a new President now (I hereby nominate the heroic Ray Nagin!) and we need a new Foreign Policy even more as we need someone better suited to the job than an Imelda Marcos shoe collecting type. Get a new hair style Condi after you return your bloody Dorothy slippers! And we don’t need a new cross eyed conservative judge on the Supreme Court to infiltrate our bedrooms at this point in the Apocalypse of the Empire. If you are going to dismantle our nation then at least let us fuck legally in the peace and privacy of own home behind closed doors!

What we always thought could not happen to the states is happening but the states is now shockingly doing it to itself for no one else is! We elected the cause of our own problems not once but twice (thanks and fuck you too Ohio!) and now that we know it we can’t terminate his lease on that infamous residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue anymore than we can end the carnage of present day Iraq. Sad but true we the people of all colors can’t bear to be the nickled and dimed Americans to bale out the Bushes stupid lily white asses any more. Nor as Gore and Kerry or Clinton for that matter have proved can the Democrats – when no one in the unforgivable and unforgettable 2000 elections - stood up for the “we the little colored folks” of the nation. It was always “their” nation anyway, we knew this through and through and in our bones – this is not our Nation, not our president, not our governors, not our banking scandal, not our Enron scandal, not our war, not our oil, definitely not our foreign policy. We will not bale out the Bush’s at our minimum wage tax payer expense for Katrina. We will not provide corporate welfare for the energy giants when we have no welfare for ourselves. Bush owes the nation and payday for we the people has finally arrived after too many decades. We can send the space shuttle up toward the moon and aim for Mars but we can’t get off our addiction to fossil fuels. Neither can we end under employment! Priorities, sister America, priorities – priorities, brother America, priorities – your actions speak louder than your blank eyed president. The blank eyes, the blank face, the smug, smirking, sneering lipless lips, and what his voice says are unrelated and unconnected to his face and it’s all a dead give away of a liar who does not even understand why he is lying let alone what he is suppose to be saying and how!

The Nation that we always knew was not an illusion of our making anyway - it was a white dream for a white people and what was left over was for the white mans guilty conscience to give to the poor white persons and then what little was left over from that was for the blacks and all the other colors of the rainbow. (This is the “trickle down theory” of Bush senior). This new awareness is the psychic tidal wave of an aftershock that Katrina laid bare across the land from sea to oil slicked shining sea – a flood of destruction that didn’t have to take make New Orleans an idea in the past tense now regrettably lost as Old Orleans. If there is a god this path of destruction that will be called an act of God will hopefully wash away the “White” House (an appalling name in this day an age of racial multi-culturalism) while taking Capitol Hill down with it and all the corporations and banks that keep the Beast alive so that the nation can be handed back to all the Americans equally for once.

If we can learn this from Biloxi and New Orleans and that whole other Gulf region the size of half of France under water and all those people who didn’t have to die because of 25 years of Governmental negligence and downsizing – if we can get our country back from this then perhaps we can say farewell to all the dead good people and a grand old city with dignity and hold our heads up high even though we are mourning our losses for the rest of the world to see. The rest of the world still wants to see a proud Lady Liberty as a beacon of true and not corporate liberty and not a beacon of Bush like economic Imperialism. Let’s face it until the Bush administration packs their bags and is forced to leave the United States if not the planet then we might as well dismantle Lady Liberty and put her pieces in storage so we can stop lying to the rest of the world and ourselves.

The collective psychic black crow of Poe of our once great nation is sighing in unison gasps nevermore, nevermore.