The fact remains that without video evidence, there isn't a whole lot more that can be done with this. And even then, I can't imagine it would be likely to hurt Jindal very much if it were out in the open. Jindal wants to appeal to the cracker base in N. Louisiana and is not above employing this kind of hateful codespeak to do so. It can only help him politically in that "part of the world". His election seems like a fait-accompli at this point in what has got to be the most boring Governor's race ever.
What is frustrating is the way the Dragon Slayer Squad (the New Orleans press and the Yuppie Left) treat Jindal with such fawning teenage lust rarely... if ever pointing out how nakedly phony his slogan-driven campaign has been to this point. I say rarely in case anyone out there happened to catch Stephanie Grace's column yesterday.
Jindal also has gone so far as to hurl the term (corruption) at his opponents, even if their supposed offenses fall way short of dishonesty, evil or whichever definition you choose -- or if it's unclear just what the alleged transgressions are supposed to be.And here you have it. Jindal isn't running against his opponents. He won't even debate them. In fact, it's hard to say he's even running for Governor of Louisiana since he talks so little about the unique problems Louisiana faces with regard to insurance, or storm protection, or coastal restoration, or our crushing poverty. No, Jindal is running to "slay the dragon". Like Buddy Roemer before him, he's running against "corruption".
It's almost as if anybody who aggressively campaigns against Jindal deserves the label
And why not? As Republicans have demonstrated for the better part of a decade now, it's much easier to run against a word than it is to run against your opponent... or much less run for anything at all. Running against "corruption" is particularly good coin in Louisiana right now because it's such a versatile word. It's a catch-all for the widespread discontent that now characterizes our political atmosphere.
In the suburbs surrounding New Orleans, to run against "corruption" means running against the Bill Jefferson machine, and against Marc Morial, and the Landrieus and all the rest of "those people" who the suburbanites voted against with their feet a generation ago. To the degree that "corruption" gets conflated with "incompetence" it allows Jindal to run against the retiring Governor Meemaw and the perpetually troubled Road Home program without having to provide a reasonable answer as to how it can be saved. In North Louisiana, running against "corruption" means running against New Orleans altogether which is always a winner in those parts regardless of the context.
It's a wonderful strategy so long as one is allowed to get away with it. And to this point, Jindal has been allowed to dragonslay the entire race away. In such an important election, one would hope for more substance. But that's your local press for you. And this brings us back to Jindal's supposed Jena remark. Should someone out there manage to dig up a recording of this quote, it likely won't hurt Jindal very much at all. But that's not why I want to see it. I want to see it come to the surface so I get to read Clancy Dubos's column about why Jindal's callous race baiting is really just a hip form of X-treme marketing that appeals to the new "Gen-X" electoral demographic. What a quote like this will do is demonstrate clearly just what kind of politics the Yuppie Left and New Orleans media will rush in to endorse all in the interest of slaying dragons. As it is, we have to rely on the conservative press to ask the interesting questions... and that's just plain icky.
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