Actually I think it's entirely proper that the President spend as much time as possible on the Gulf coast until this thing gets fixed. After all, we already know his presence has a positive, if temporary, impact on clean-up efforts. Also I think he's afraid of being outdone by Rachel Maddow.
If you missed Maddow's broadcast from Algiers last night, it's worth a look. Maddow has outperformed anybody else in cable news as far as reporting facts about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is concerned. She's not the greatest talking head in the world but she does at least make an effort to get it right.
The T-P's Dave Walker highlights a segment of last night's show where Maddow picked up on a popular local joke about the city's website.
Noting how much she and her staff always enjoy New Orleans' history, music, food and cocktails, Maddow said the most they usually can offer in return is to "spend some money and say thank you." Wednesday, she offered some branding help -- upgrading the city's official URL: www.CityofNO.com -- as a gratuity. "That is not right," Maddow said of New Orleans' official Web welcome mat. "New Orleans isn't the city of 'no.' It's anything but." So the show took the liberty of acquiring two more appropriate addresses, which it is offering to the city as a gift.
One is www.CityofYes.us.
The other: www.CityofHellNo.com.
I think it's cute that Maddow took the time to share this idiosyncrasy with America. But the thing is, I've always liked "City of NO" The phrase carries a kind of defiant... I don't know... punk quality. It doesn't bend to the stifling convention that every service portal needs to wear a phony happy face in order to function properly. Yes, I know the website and the City government it accesses are not known for their functionality but my argument here is that these issues are not remedied by hollow sloganeering.
Besides, who is to say that the URL even represents the City's message to us? Is it not the citizens who are afforded the privilege of typing those words into their browsers upon beginning an interaction with this site? Who is telling who to fuck off here? Even in the time before municipal services were conducted via internet, I would personally delight in making out my check to "City of NO" when paying my (James Perry-esque number of) parking tickets. This act, like the URL was a small cathartic moment in an otherwise dismal interaction with the faceless monolith of city government. Why would we want to give that up?
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