Rendered blind and breathless by the sweltering heat of an MSY jetway this afternoon, I cooled off in the terminal long enough to catch today’s T-P headline: Thomas To Plead Guilty.
City Councilman and future mayoral contender Oliver Thomas has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to charges of demanding illegal payments from a City Hall vendor and is expected to resign his at-large seat on the council as early as Monday …
No way! He’s one of the better, more responsive ones! This may explain why we heard nothing from him during the Jordan-related email onslaught on City Hall. Serves Thomas right for being a crook while proclaiming that criminals and thugs are no longer welcome in New Orleans. How is an at-large councilperson replaced? Of course, the real question is who’s next on the list of NOLA political circus rejects?
Speaking of circuses, I hear Our Mayor Who Lives In An Alternate Universe a.k.a. Alter-Nagin (which explains the goatee) suffered from another bout of Foot In Mouth disease this weekend. Indeed, our mayor described crime in New Orleans as a double-edged sword, implying that there is something inherently good about murder and its out-of-control rate in this city. Ray, have you really been hanging at the Crawford ranch during your various “business” trips away from the city? Even worse, is Stu Bykofsky your speechwriter? If not, kindly shut it.
If our people need to keep killing, be killed and live in fear of slaughter to “keep the New Orleans brand out there, and [to keep] people thinking about our needs and what we need to bring this community back,” there is nothing left to market and it’s time for all of us to pack up and close shop. There is no silver lining to such tragedy and injustice. None.
Rising Tide 2 is served in less than two weekends. I’m thinking of setting up a Wailing Wall.
