Instead, lets start by looking at the bang-up job done by local radio of discussing the important issues skirted around or lied about by the mayor yesterday. Last night, Varg girded himself to listen to Bob Mitchell's after-speech discussion on WWL wherein Mitchell the Slidellian hung up on callers who were displaced to Baton Rouge because they were "not from New Orleans" WWL's hosts are well known for conducting "conversations" in which points of view other than that of the host are dismissively screamed over, callers are hung up on, and guests are routinely cut-off and talked over. It's an infuriatingly perfect horror show.. so naturally I listen religiously.
The comedic idiocy is nearly enough to allow the casual listener to put the hypocrisy out of mind. But it seems that WWL's purpose is to do anything in its power to obstruct rather than facilitate meaningful public discussion. Sometimes it goes through great feats of acrobatics to achieve this.
Case in point: Last night, Mayor Nagin's speech addressed the state of the city's recovery as the administration sees it. He spoke about the following critical issues.
1) Health care
2) Crime
3) City finances
4) His controversial sanitation contracts
5) Emergency preparedness
6) Rebuilding plans
WWL, in analyzing this speech could choose any or all of the above topics for discussion. Callers could offer their thoughts on what the Mayor said, whether or not they agree with him, where they thought he was full of shit.. etc.
It would also be interesting to discuss Nagin's attacks on Gov Meemaw and the Road Home program. He seemed to suggest that he had better ideas for dispersing federal and state funds. There are rumors that Nagin is running for Governor this year. Do his statements last night sound like those of a candidate for state office? I would like to listen to that show.
Within the context of such a show it would also be fun to discuss the Mayor's.. idiosyncratic speaking style. We could talk about the part where he crassly and clumsily built an analogy between the city and the terminally ill "mother of one of my staff" or how he crescendoed this analogy with the statement, "I choose life" as though he were in a Wham video. Or we could talk about the part where he said the garbage collection carts in the Quarter are "uniformed". Or we could talk about the way he addressed the controversy over his questionable garbage collection contracts. (He uttered the one-word sentence "Controversy" and spoke no further on the subject.)
So you can see there's a lot of fun to be had there and it doesn't necessarily have to come at the expense of a substantive discussion. But like I said, WWL doesn't really even want to try. Here, instead, is the actual text of the opinion poll question WWL is asking its listeners this morning.. ostensibly as a non-ironic stab at sparking a thoughtful conversation.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says ''the state of our city is one of strength and determination.'' When it comes to recovery are you strong and determined?
Are they serious? Interestingly enough.. at the moment, 77% of respondents at wwl.com are answering "No, I am not strong and determined" Yeah neither am I.
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