It was during the City of New Orleans' most trying period in history, during the fight for its very survival, that we, The People, cast our greatest folly: The votes that elected Ray Nagin to a second term as Mayor.
We elected the Clown Prince, the swaggering, jive-talkin' Cable Guy; once seen as a breath of fresh air for his lack of political savvy and guile, then exposed and picked apart for that very same reason; he was an easy mark for the sharks who came trolling for their pieces of the Katrina pie.
These men, he called friends. With them, he travelled the world in private jets and lounged on island resorts.
According to federal documents, he traded them the Keys to the Kingdom for a bag of silver and gifts of stone. Or something like that.
It sounds so Biblical.
And now these so-called friends and financiers – their names left unspoken here; best purged and forgotten from the record – are said to be lined up like songbirds on a wire, ready to admit their own transgressions – and Nagin's – to curry favor from the Feds.
And Nagin has fittingly taken to trumpeting passages from the Good Book as his reaction to the prevailing wisdom that he is about to feel the Wrath of a Higher Power – that of the U.S. Attorney's Office.
"The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting. – Psalm 119:160."
"The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. – Proverbs 10:11."
He has sent these messages via the Twitter universe, a diminished, invisible podium from which he now addresses the masses, laying down one final, bizarre, quixotic oratorical flourish before he goes, shall we say – offline?
Righteous Ray. The martyr to ordinances everlasting.
He seems so alone now – and so very, very sad – as he casts oblique aspersions upon those who would settle the scores.
Those Judas Iscariots!
The last man standing: Does he feel triumph – or defeat? Honor – or fear?
Does he understand that the last man standing is nothing more than the last one to fall?
File/AP Photo
