Excellence in Recovery Bookshelf

Stephanie Grace's column this morning attempts to trace what she sees as similarities between New Orleans's buffoonish Mayor and its buffoonologist outgoing Recovery Czar. There's some fun to be had there but, as I have said for some time now, the proper analog for Ray Nagin is George W Bush.

Besides, Grace's column overlooks one crucial commonality between her subjects. Each one is an aspiring author. Blakely has been talking openly about the his plans to share his part-time experiences in New Orleans with a publishing house for some time now. And similarly City Hall watchers are familiar with the repeated references to "the book" emanating from Nagin staffers.

In anticipation of these forthcoming works... and in the interest of preserving any and all "lessons learned" from our time without the cranes... I'm setting aside a special place in my home to display the Excellence in Recovery Collection. It would be a single bookshelf holding copies of Nagin's and Blakely's works along with How to Maximize FEMA Funding After a Natural Disaster by Veronica White and of course multiple copies of One Dead in the Attic (whose author, I should mention, is comparing Nagin to Paris Hilton in his most recent column; the latest effort in his quest to shoehorn our understanding of the world into the idiom of tired celebrity gossip).

I'm moving some things around so that I can raise the bookshelf above base flood elevation. Ideally I'd like to have it set atop a framed "Recovery in Progress" sign but I haven't decided which one I'd most like to steal. Also, does anyone have an extra Bernardo award or two laying around? I'm looking for an appropriately insubstantial bookend.