"Ray Nagin, the error-prone mayor"
Tags: ray nagin, new york timesJohn Leo from 9/21:
Which politician emerged from the mess of Katrina as the biggest bonehead involved? No, it's not Michael Brown, George W. Bush, or even the bumbling Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.
The clear winner is New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who made every conceivable mistake during the crisis. With plenty of warning, he delayed the evacuation order, had no drivers ready to operate the school buses that stood idle, failed to stock the Superdome with food and water, and let the looters rampage without any interference from police…
…So today the New York Times has a news profile of the mayor. How does it treat Nagin? You guessed it–he's a hero. The lead of the story is "Hurricane Katrina has given the nation a new political celebrity, the mayor of beleaguered New Orleans." (Nation to city: Can we please give this alleged celebrity back?) The headline is worse, a classic in intentional inaccuracy: "A Storm Survivor, Political Reputation Intact." If Nagin's reputation is intact, so are Bush's, Brown's, and Blanco's. Many of Nagin's antics during Katrina are mentioned briefly, well down in the story.
But the article, posing as a news report, is a heavy-handed editorial and a foolish one at that. "Mr. Nagin has emerged as something of a folk hero." The Times is still having credibility problems and seems determined not to do much about them.
