Farewell Tour

Not sure Bobby Jindal has put out his tour dates just yet. Please keep us appraised if any announcements are forthcoming.

Jindal plans a statewide tour to highlight his achievements before leaving office in January. He said he hasn’t decided on his political future just yet. At 44 years old and with an impressive resume of political jobs under his belt, Jindal is certain to have an array of options.

Whether the charm offensive in his last weeks as governor will improve his reputation in Louisiana, however, remains questionable.

But Jindal isn't alone. Lots of longtime favs (and not so favs) are finishing 2015 with conspicuous exits. So if you want to follow along behind the tour, you might be riding in a crowded party bus.

We already know Rob Ryan is riding it off into the sunset of vengeance or something. 

Ryan, who acknowledged that the Saints didn’t fire him until at least four hours after the initial Fox Sports report came out Monday morning, was in California visiting his son Joe when the opportunity to make an appearance on the NFL Network arrived.

But he doesn’t plan to move into TV full-time. Despite the way things ended in New Orleans, Ryan expects to be back in coaching soon.

“The bottom line is this: I’ll hold my head high and walk out in the sunset,” Ryan said. “But believe me, I’ll come back with a vengeance.”

We also know that "Voice of the Tigers" Jim Hawthorne is walking out into the same sunset... or maybe that's Jack Hunt.

And, of course, David Vitter is going away too.

I think his legacy is two-fold: First, he did more than any other individual to make Louisiana a solidly Republican state through party building at the grass roots level, precise messaging, very successful fundraising and unrelenting criticism of the opposing party.

Second, he proved that fear, anger and intimidation are still powerful political weapons, especially in the hands of someone without a conscience, but the oldest rule in politics is still “What goes around comes around,” and if you spend an entire career fucking over people you’re supposed to work WITH, sooner or later you’re going to be hoist on your own pee-tard–probably in a very ugly and public manner

Or to put that another way, 

Vitter has spent the first half of his career criticizing adulterous liars and the second half skirting questions about being an adulterous liar. He relentlessly scapegoated gays, sounded the alarm about brown illegals and leveraged racially-charged issues.

Now these two awkward, arrogant, irritating, weird, friendless men (Vitter and Jindal) — who have been in office for so long and have accomplished so little good— go home defeated.

Or to put it still another way, David Vitter is a disgrace to humanity and will be long remembered as such.

Speaking of which, Vitter's pal and.. um.. PR professional Scott McKay is also making sounds as though he may go off a wanderin' too.

You guys already know everything I have to say on the elections this weekend, since I did seven different posts on them yesterday. We’re moving on from that. I am not sanguine about the prospects for Louisiana’s future, and frankly I’m going to be thinking about whether to include myself in it.

One imagines that is very similar to what Wendy Ellis said once that Vitter money dried up for her too. 

But wait. We may need to save some room on the bus for Les Miles.  We used to be pretty hard on Les around here. That was until a few years into the run when we made peace with his obvious flaws as a football strategist and learned to appreciate the things he does better than a great majority of college coaches.

Les is a top notch recruiter. Not only that but, once he convinces kids to play for him, he is supportive of them throughout their tenure. There have been some tough situations with some of these players, but you never see Les Miles hang anyone out to dry. He's genuinely loyal and his players seem to like playing for him. During his time at LSU, the program has developed more professional talent than any other school.

After many years of this, you'd think LSU fans and alumni would be well used to the product Les Miles delivers: Always very talented. Not particularly well organized or.. well... prepared to play fundamentally sound or smart football. But always very entertaining and successful far more often than not.  Shouldn't that be enough? If you dump that overboard, who knows what comes next?  How many Curley Hallmans will LSU fans suffer through now before they find anything close to the fun we had watching Les Miles goof off and accidentally beat people for a decade?

But more and more the rumors point us to the notion that Les is gonna be on that Farewell Tour bus with the rest of these guys.  I hope they don't let him drive.