I love Dawn Brown

Yes, the WWL meteorologist -- that Dawn Brown.

I turned on the WDSU radio broadcast on the way home after an evening out to dinner to listen for election results. I was shattered after hearing Ray Nagin tell me that I had "visited the red light district" by voting for the other guy.

I don't think I felt more disappointed to hear that George W. Bush had won stolen his re-election re-selection.

This is personal.

So when I finally got home, I'd already heard all of the meaningless and obligatory "time to come together" platitudes by everyone from the Nagin and Landrieu camps.

I was feeling thoroughly defeated.

Then, I turned on WWL, and there was Dawn Brown, with that great big smile and slightly goofy delivery, talking about something else -- the weather. I have a fondness for goofy girls -- the ones who might be characters in a Dr. Seuss book. Sorry Dawn -- don't take that in the wrong way -- what I mean is that I prefer the goofy humanity in your delivery to, for example, the smarmy professionalism of Dan Milham who's been perfecting the same lines for 150 years.

The point is, I did so need to see that happy smiling face when, expecting Mitch Landrieu to win, my plan was to post the following photo Sunday morning:



I went out to New Orleans East Saturday afternoon and stopped at a polling place to find out what people were thinking as they stood in the voting booths. I didn't hear anything substantive. It was all about how they felt sorry for the mayor. No one could have handled a crisis of the scale of Hurricane Katrina. Nagin had made mistakes, sure, yada yada yada, but Landrieu represented a corrupt political dynasty from the past. Oh ... no ... they couldn't actually name any specific incident, but it just must be true that a family that's so politically active is corrupt.

Maybe, subconsciously, they were really remembering Marc Morial.

Imagine that -- that blacks would actually think that the Landrieu family hasn't fairly represented the interests of black New Orleanians over the years -- or that the Landrieus have been too liberal for God's sake? Too entrenched with the Democratic party machine?

Irony of ironies.

Well, they can thank the Republican party smear machine for creating that impression with ads, signs, and mailers like these:









So what, exactly, is the GNOR?



When they were in a losing position, when their candidate was down, the Republican smear machine attacked Mitch's character with insinuation, and attacked the family name.

I was starting to think yesterday that people who didn't vote for Mitch would be surprised by how much good he would do for the city as mayor.

Now I'm thinking that people will be surprised by how lousy Nagin will be as a second-term mayor.

Expect more government by crisis, no vision, no planning, no follow through, no solutions. In particular, I suspect that there are a lot of blacks in New Orleans East who will regret their vote. They might rebuild, once the insurance money comes in, once the federal grants start coming in, if Nagin stays on top of the Corps levee improvements, if Nagin gets the infrastructure fixed, if the city doesn't go bankrupt, but will they have schools and businesses? Now, people are doing their grocery shopping Uptown. Will New Orleans East ever reach the population density necessary to support businesses with Nagin's leadership?

I doubt it. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic. It's probably time to hang it up.

One last thought, was Nagin mimicking Kimberly Williamson Butler by comparing himself to Gandhi when he delivered his victory speech?

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win.

I think I'll be paying more attention to the weather forecast now.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina | Katrina | New Orleans | Louisiana | We Are Not OK | Mitch | Mitch Landrieu | Nagin | Ray Nagin | New Orleans Election |