Oh, they like our food, our music, and our atmosphere – they’ll vacation here anytime. But they despise us, and even though most of the time I make the effort to correctly point out that Chicago and Vegas – not to mention Washington, D.C. – are every bit as corrupt, if not more, I can’t work up the energy to do so today.
When I read an article like this or hear what I just heard on the radio defending it, I am nauseated. Most New Orleanians, and most people in the New Orleans metro area, actively disagree with this, but this is what gets the press:
PARDON ME, MR. PRESIDENT: Just eight months into his three-year federal prison term for taking bribes and kickbacks from a City Hall vendor, former City Councilman Oliver Thomas is looking for mercy from on high.
News of a request for a presidential pardon on Thomas’ behalf surfaced last Sunday in the weekly St. Henry’s Catholic Church bulletin, which includes an item urging parishioners to weigh in.
Just now on talk radio, a clip was played of a woman asserting that Oliver’s arrest and sentence “did a great disservice to the city of New Orleans.”
That word, disservice – I don’t think it means what she thinks it means. Oliver Thomas took bribes. He was caught. He pled guilty. What does our great city a disservice is the ongoing excuses for corruption and theft.
I don’t care how charming a politician is – when their behavior is criminal, as Oliver Thomas’s was, as Edwin Edwards was, as countless other Louisiana politicians have been – it’s past time we stopped defending them and demanding the status quo. We deserve honest government, and we need to demand it.
