Dr. Flakely

I appreciated Gill's column yesterday to a certain extent. It's the first time in a while I've seen something resembling real fire coming from a T-P column.. and particularly from Gill.. aimed at the city administration. While Blakely's past buffoonery has been treated as mildly "controversial" by the paper it hasn't yet been chastised in this fashion. So I'm glad to see Gill make a run at it.

But I'm not sure the moniker "Dr. Flakely" makes the correct point about the problem we have in Blakely. It's not that the man is "flakey" it's that he is disingenuous about his intentions here and largely disinterested in New Orleans. Gill points to evidence of this in Blakely's repeated tendency to spread absurd misconceptions about the city in his many off-the-cuff remarks. I was particularly dismayed by the "drains built by the French" comment. That's the kind of thing you might expect to hear from a tourist interested in New Orleans's "cajun" culture.. or looking for alligators in the French Quarter or something but not from the man whose job it is to actually learn something about the city he's charged with rebuilding. It sounds "flakey" because it is incorrect, but it's actually worse. It is indicative of a fundamental disinterest in the subject. Blakely's behavior from "Day Zero" has been arrogant, dismissive, and bullying... altogether inexcusable. Calling it flakey is giving it too much of a pass.