Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you…
“I don’t want to see anybody do any more goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don’t do another press conference until the resources are in this city, and then come down to this city, and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can’t even count. Don’t tell me forty thousand people are coming here! They’re not here! It’s too doggone late. Now get off your asses and let’s do something, and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country!”
–Ray Nagin, 09.01.05
Big-time disasters have the curious secondary effect of creating instant celebrities. This isn’t all that surprising. When chaos strikes, the natural American response is to turn on the television and stare wide-eyed at CNN until you pass out from tense exhaustion. Someone is bound to be in the spotlight. It worked for Rudy Guiliani, former Mayor of New York City, when terrorists attacked in ‘01. Suddenly his name was being praised on the lips of bewildered citizens from one coast to the other, to the point where TV journalists made the occasional “President Guiliani” Freudian slip.
And now, it’s happened again, this time with the onslaught of those wicked stepsister Hurricanes, Katrina and Rita. We knew somebody was going to make it big. Not Brian Williams, even if he is the new Peter Jennings, nor any other journalist. It’s also not Lt. General Honoree, advertised as the National Guard’s John Wayne, who has already fallen back off the map by now. And it’s definitely not Michael Brown, though he did become famous too, first as a villain/scapegoat, and more recently as a whiney crybaby who can’t get things done. No, Hurricane Season ’05’s new superstar in none other than Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans.
And I like him. Why? Not because of his Giuliani-style stardom. Giuliani is actually a bit of a glamour whore, even if he did do a good job. No no, I like Ray Nagin because he’s a regular dude. He’s not calm and collected in the face of danger. You’ve seen him on television. He’s tired. He’s nervous. He’s worried. He looks like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in a month, and isn’t afraid to show it to the national media. He doesn’t wear that goddamn insufferable smirk that George Bush and Dick Cheney can maintain in the face of any blunder known to man. The reason I dig Ray Nagin is that he’s genuinely upset, and that means he probably actually gives a damn.
I like politicians who give a damn; they’re a rare commodity these days. That doesn’t address whether or not he’s doing a good job (though I think he is); that’s another matter entirely. Nagin is clearly in over his head, this isn’t what he signed up for, and he’s worried about it. Good for him.
Which is not to say that’s he’s not a badass. Ray Nagin will let The Man have it when necessary, and that’s what he did in a now-famous fourteen-minute interview, broadcast on AM radio station WWL on September 1st, after the levees broke. Full of rage and disgust, he defiantly declared, “There is nothing happening, and they’re feeding the public a line of bull, and they’re spinning, and people are dying down here,” and that “somebody needs to get their ass on a plane, and sit down and figure this out right now.” He maintained that he had requested everything the federal government could supply, and in response to questions about relief efforts being stalled by bureaucracy and protocol, countered, “Did the Iraqi people request that we go in there?” Touché.
Nagin also clarified some questions about the post-flood crime wave, suggesting that it was closely related to New Orleans’ drug problem:
“Drugs flow in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me. And that’s why we were having the escalation in murders. People don’t want to talk about this, but I’m going to talk about it. You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city, looking for a fix. And that’s the reason why they were breaking into hospitals and drugstores; they’re looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will. And right now, they don’t have anything to take the edge off, and they’ve probably found guns. So what you’ve seen is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wreaking havoc, and we don’t have the man power to adequately deal with it.”
Right-click here to download an .mp3 of the complete interview.
Ray Nagin was born on June 11, 1956, which makes him a Gemini. According to Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs, “If the Sun was in Gemini when he was born, this man will not remain tomorrow what he is today, nor will he have any lasting memory of yesterday.” Appropriately enough, Nagin was a registered Republican in 2000, contributed money to both Republicans and Democrats, and then switched his affiliation to run on the Democratic ticket only days before he began his run for Mayor in 2002. Depending on your point of view, this makes him either the perfect bipartisan politician, or totally unreliable.
Nagin is up for reelection in May 2006, assuming there’s anything left to be mayor of by then. If I were him, I’d probably give up now, ride the term out, and move to Canada. But I am not Ray Nagin, and in any case it remains to be seen just how the political windfall will finally hit him – whether he’ll be ushered out in disgrace and replaced with a wild card more humiliating than Schwarzenegger’s trumping of Gray Davis, or reelected in a landslide, carried on the shoulders of a million Orleanians who want everything back the way it was.
“I’m at the point now where it don’t matter. People are dying. They don’t have homes, they don’t have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same.”
–Ray Nagin, 09.01.05
Somehow I get the feeling that, if there is an electorate in New Orleans next spring, Nagin will be among friends.