I have a great idea for a reality TV show. Trading Mayors. For the first episode, we send Barry to New Orleans and Nagin to Washington.
Thanks, Cartooniverse. Those cites you found were certainly closely related to what I remember seeing. Thus far I haven’t found a written cite about the shortage of qualified inspectors, but considering the shortages of everything/everybody else involved in the cleanup, it’s not hard to extrapolate an inspector shortage, too.
I was wondering if anyone would ever get around to pitting this halfwit racist douchebag.
There is enough failure to go around in NOLA…
The people who stayed when they should have left, and were blessed with the ability to walk and didn’t.
They failed.
Nagin is responsible for New Orleans and the people therein.
He failed.
The state of Louisiana (Blanco) is responsible for the assistance of their citizens when their local gov’ts are overwhelmed.
They failed.
The Levee boards are charged with maintenance and upgrades on the levee system.
They failed.
The ACOE were the project heads on the entire levee system.
They failed.
Messrs. Clinton and Bush took scads of money from the levee system for other meaningless pork.
They failed.
Mr. Bush put that criminally stupid Michael Brown in charge of the responses in cases of emergency.
He failed.
FEMA spun it’s wheels for several days after the breach, then over-reacted to take some of the heat off, and ended up with as much fraud, waste and abuse (no cite) as actual assistance.
With all of that failure, nothing is as offensive, or as maddening or as utterly offensive as his comparison of Ground Zero to a simple hole in the ground.
Not the overtly racist “Chocolate city” comment, (which, if Guiliani had said “this will be a vanilla city again” after 9/11 he would be right next to David Duke, George Wallace and Strom Thurmond on the ash heap of history like Nagin should be).
Not the obvious fumbling and mishandling of the resources at his command.
Not the shining example of arrogance and stupidity.
Nothing is as offensive as that. Nothing.
Well, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen “crackpipe” used as a personal insult before, but I’ve seen “crackhead” applied to plenty of white people.
The “Crackpipe” moniker belongs to the dumb fucks who voted for the incompotent asshole Nagin. Just unbelievable. I gave a good chunk of change to katrina relief, and was glad to be able to. If it happens again, fuck 'em. I’ll just give them their well-deserved Darwin Awards nominations.
I propose to the other comrades on the SDMB Revolutionary People’s Steering Committee (Trotskyist) that we adopt the term “crackpipe” for anyone stupid enough to have voted for GeeDub twice. Register your votes with Der Trihs
Hell, I’d say once would do it.
He referred to Ground Zero as a “hole in the ground” that hasn’t been repaired after five years. He didn’t add the word simple which implies that it was nothing more than that. (Just being accurate about a comment that offended many)
No matter how insensitive and provocative, words will never offend me as much as starving children, chanting masses of abandoned people without water, dead people floating in the street.
At this point I kind of wonder if Ray Nagin is kind of the Paris Hilton of Mayors. Given the limited actual authority and resources of a mayor, far inadequate to deal with rebuilding NOLA, the next best thing might be to keep the situation in the national eye. So he goes into attention whore mode and keeps it in the news when pretty much everyone else, from Bush on down, is no longer talking about NOLA.
If this is true, expect to see some embarassing video on the Internet as his next step.
Enjoy,
Steven
cancels internet service
I’m reminded of Bill Bryson’s comment that the main thing to know about the Corps is that they don’t build things very well.
Maybe after 200+ years it’s time to admit that we’re no longer a raw young nation that has to depend on West Point for civil engineering know-how, and to question the idea that the Army should have anything at all to do with water. I mean, is there some Act of Congress that prohibits the Seabees from being used domestically?
(Yeah, I know the Seabees basically work on land. The above is in the nature of a rant.)
Interestingly, another thread active in the pit right now is entitled: A racially divided Survivor? Are they fucking smoking crack?
Do you think this poster was trying to imply that the people who made this decision at CBS are all black?
Not to excuse Michael Brown’s ineffectiveness or to needlessly add to the BASH BUSH PARADE but:
It seems to me that the admonistration bears more than the “buck stops here” culpability that a lot of people seem to think it the extent of their Katrina failures. For me the “buck stops here” rationale is enough to damn them regardless of Brown’s incompetence (or actually because of Brown’s incompetence) but it seems that they were engaging in the direct exercise of incompetence and not just by proxy through Brown.
A reasonable person could have voted for Bush the first time around out of pure party loyalty. I for one figured it didn’t really matter, after all how much harm could he possibly do?
Has anyone heard anything about how Michael Brown’s hair is doing this year?
Does he still need that mousse stuff to keep it from running wild?
Agreed. I was being somewhat hyperbolic. I think luci was under the impression that I voted for Bush. Of course, as bad as any candidate might be one has to take into account the other options. And if one is not williing to vote third party, IMO Bush was still the better choice of the two.
When I read this, I heard the voice of Raymond Burr as Perry Mason: “So, Mister Witness, you claim that 2+2=4. But tell me this: if you also claimed that 0.1167 plus a billion and two equals four, wouldn’t you be wrong?!!!” “ARRGH!! Yes, yes, I confess it! If I said what you’re saying, it would be wrong, so wrong that I could never show my face here again! I’m so ashamed I think I’ll do away with mysel…wait a minute. I didn’t say that – you did. Siddown, ya cluck!”
I didn’t read the thread you refer to, and it wouldn’t matter what I thought of it if I had. But I’ll spot you these little issues, because there’s some potential here. As is, your analogy has too many holes in it to make a decent sieve, and a sieve has too many holes in it to make a decent analogy. But there’s a good point underneath all the guano.
First important difference: construction of the insult. Asking “Is X on crack?” is a rhetorical plea for an explanation of outrageous behavior, with the work “crack” employed as an illustration of how outrageous the behavior is. Saying “Crackpipe X…” assumes the explanation: you don’t get that nickname because of your renowned collection of antique hand-made crackpipes.
Second important difference: "Them! vs. “Over there – That guy!” See, when you isolate a particular target by name, you’re implying factual rigor in all other areas as well. You’d better have a really good reason for connecting a specific person to a specific accusation. It’s one thing if I spout off about the leaky bladders on the SDMB who disagree with me, that’s incredibly stupid and offensive, but not the same kind of irresponsible tripe as if I started critically analyzing the idiotic posts of someone I called “bedwetting Sarahfeena.”
Third important difference, plausibility vs. truth: Although it is not more true that Ray Nagin is a crackhead than that CBS execs and reality-show producers are, it is (if for no reason other than specificity) easier to believe, which makes it much more damaging. When we make accusations (like probable crack use) whose plausibility is enhanced by demographics (crack being largely seen as a disadvantaged/black/urban problem), picking on the mayor of NOLA (it being, at the moment, the prototypical disadvantaged/black/urban part of the U.S., plucks the ethnic/class chord so hard as to break the strings.
Fourth important difference – representation: Try this: “CBS executives are stupid and lazy.” Now try this: “Blacks are stupid and lazy.” Which seems less likely to win eternal inscription among the stars? And who better seems to portray a group, Nagin or a bunch of SoCal investment bankers?
Wow. That you have more imagination than I gave you credit for. It was a simple question, which had only to do with whether every reference to smoking crack necessarily implied something about race.
I didn’t read it either…I just wanted to know, as I say above, if the title of it has some sort of racial implication.
I think you may be reading too much into the OP. If “Is X on crack?” is a “rhetorical plea for an explanation of outrageous behavior,” as you say, then perhaps the OP feels that the behavior of Nagin is outrageous enough to confirm the crack usage, as there is no other possible explanation.
I grant you that this was a specific insult to a specific person, but it may or may not have to do anything with being black. If the OP of the Survivor thread had found out who at CBS was ultimately responsible for the decision, and called that person “Crackpipe John Doe,” would that necessarily imply that John Doe was black?
So you can’t imply he’s on crack BECAUSE he’s black? But if a person is white or some other racial/ethnic group, then you can? Sounds like discrimination to me.
No one said anything about Nagin being black, or that he represents all black people. Some people happen to think he is corrupt and not very bright. I, for one, do not think his corruption and/or lack of intelligence has anything to do with his race, and do not consider him to be “representative” of anything other than some politicians who are corrupt and not very bright.
Sarahfeena, if your worldview is such that calling a prominent black American politician by the nickname “crackpipe,” with no evidence whatever that he has ever had any illicit relationship with the drug, is justified by the possibility that some rich white person somewhere might be similarly (though namelessly and implausibly) smeared, then you win. There’s no argument or fact that can penetrate your wall of ignorance. Your simple question has a complicated answer: treating people exactly the same way can sometimes result in very different outcomes.
But let’s cut across. Your argument seems to be that if calling Ted Kennedy “You filthy nigger” isn’t racist (because it’s just absurd), then it’s okay to yell the same phrase at Barak Obama. I say calling Ray Nagin “‘Crackpipe’ Ray Nagin” is wrong not only because it’s a lie, but also because it plays into and reinforces stupid but common prejudices against black Americans. You’re willing to countenance the lie to protect the prejudice: I’m not willing to accept either.
Try this: tell me why making a personal, false accusation against your adversary is justified in the absence of racist motives, and *then * we can talk about why bigotry against various groups makes it okay.