So Ray Nagin, in his post Katrina stress mode, or in his "Help Mister Wizard I don't want to be Mayor anymore" attempt to throw the forthcoming election, has decided that talking to God AND to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is all a very good thing. In this he joins other wonderful, forthright and intellectual public servants like of course George Bush and, my personal favorite, Pat Robertson.Well, after all of this God Talk (and talk back) I've become very curious as to why God keeps saying different things to all these different people. I mean he tells Dubya that it is important to go to war in Iraq, but he tells Ray Nagin that he's angry about the war in Iraq, so he's sending hurricanes to get us. Of course, the hurricanes don't wind up in Crawford Texas (now THAT would be a miracle worthy of divine blame!). Robertson, who I'm pretty sure has been talking to God (and to the dust bunnies) for a lot longer than Nagin or Dubya COMBINED decided that God is mad at New Orleans because of Gays and Abortions and sent Katrina to take us out for that reason. He picked up this line of reasoning from another pinhead God talker… Jerry Falwell who blamed the maniacs who crashed planes into the twin towers on Lesbians, Abortionists and… drum roll please… the ACLU, while Pat sat next to him doing his best impersonation of Harpo Marx.
Most recently Pat has been saying that God has a biological contract out on Ariel Sharon (much like Pat called for the government assasination of Venezuelan President Chavez) for messing with YHWH's real estate investments.
Of course, in the Katrina case, Robertson negelected to note that the brunt of Katrina actually MISSED New Orleans ever so slightly and that the people hit hardest by the flood were neither gays nor abortionists. Which brings me back to Ray Nagin who has decided that GOD wants New Orleans to be a "chocolate city." Almost immediately he started back peddling on that one, winging his way to the proclamation that what he meant was CHOCOLATE MILK, not a really great metaphor either (ESPECIALLY after Katrina), but I guess his omnipresent speechwriter wasn't taking calls right at that precise moment.
I really don't think Nagin meant that he only wants African Americans in New Orleans, and the fact remains that pre-K the city was a majority black city, and there is absolutely no denying that the makeup of the city AS a majority African American city goes a long way to making New Orleans the very place it is. If the central cultural marker of New Orleans is Jazz music and its related genres, not to mention all of the other art that grows out of the rich cultural gumbo created here, then any thought that somehow New Orleans can (or will) substantially change in that way is ludicrous, callous and stupid. But New Orleans' mixture is more than all of that… and frankly, Dr. King's message was oh so much more than that.
Somehow I'm having a hard time getting my mind around God (or Martin Luther King Jr. for that matter) sitting up in heaven, screaming to Ray Nagin at the other end of a cell phone like Cuba Gooding Jr. and Tom Cruise.
Mayor Nagin seems to have decided that as a follow up to his career as a cable tv executive, and mayor, he now wants to be a Baptist preacher. I learned a long time ago (when I actually WAS a Baptist preacher) that one should not speak for folks who are significantly superior to oneself in behavioral, intellectual or rhetorical skills. So, with all this confusion I decided to have a little talk with God myself… and she asked me to pass on a message to everyone. She told me to tell y'all to…
SHUT THE HELL UP!
