Throwing Blakely under the crane

This morning when I saw this latest in a long series of hissy fits between Federal and local recovery poo-bahs my first thought was something along the lines of "there they go again." Everyone knows we certainly have no truck with Ed Blakely here at the Yellow Blog. As this post from back in April clearly demonstrates, we've pretty much had Blakely Fatigue since the very day the man arrived in town.

So as much as we enjoy the irony of seeing Blakely, who arrived in New Orleans complaining about the hapless buffoonery of the native populace, now roundly spanked by Douglas O'Dell for being quite the buffoon in his own right, and as much as we'd love to sit here and laugh along at O'Dell's zingers fired off at Blakely, we have to admit that the whole business is more sad than it is funny.

(Okay it's still pretty damn funny though. For example

He said Blakely is often absent and unavailable and leads an office that produces "ethereal visions" of recovery that cannot be financed with federal recovery dollars.

We thought that the responsibility for producing ethereal visions in this administration belonged to Bernardo.)

It's sad because of the vulgarity of how quickly the perpetual buffoon-bashing torch can be passed to the next outside critic these days with no diminution of that rhetorical tactic's political power. When Ed Blakely arrived in town two years ago pretending to be a head cracking no-nonsense type he enjoyed the immediate unquestioning admiration of the majority of the self-hating Dragonslaying NOLA establishment for long after he deserved even the slightest benefit of the doubt. Some of us had him pegged as a phony after his first press conference, but in New Orleans, anyone willing to tell us all just how rotten and stupid we are tends to get a wide berth from everyone on the NOLA conventional wisdom spectrum from the Couhig Conservatives to the Yuppie Left.

So despite the fact that we're happy to see somebody slap him, you'll forgive us for not applauding too loudly as we are in full knowledge of the fact that the criticism is really just one buffoon-bashing phony bitch-slapping another one in order to score some dubious political points. The names are changed but the narrative remains, "Those backward-ass people down there really don't deserve anyone's help."

See WCBF for a pretty good cautious analysis.

Update: I should remind everyone here. This coming Monday marks the one year anniversary of the day the cranes didn't come.

Or did they?

Upperdate: Well there you have it. Remember when Blakely came to town, everyone thought he would straighten Nagin out? Worked out well.

Upperestdate: E states it more forcefully this time:

Yet clearly the General is not flying off the handle. These are prepared remarks, or at least there is a prepared intention behind the remarks. Mayor Nagin is a friend of the Bush administration and will likely not be criticized by Bush-appointee Doug O' Dell.

Good riddance if there is now a movement afoot to force Blakely's resignation. He has been nothing short of an abombination but let's not pretend like rearranging the deck chairs on the S.S. Nagin will make any difference in terms of the ideological framework that drives our unrecovery process. You ain't a sinking ship if you're already sunk.

And then there's more in the visual aid department.