Mayor C. Ray “Willy” Nagin and the Chocolate Factory

One of the many reasons I love America – capitalism! Mayor Ray Nagin’s speech was yesterday and this morning someone got right to work creating a web business to make money mocking it.
I’mNotChocolate.com has tshirts and bumper stickers for sale featuring this graphic:

Ray Nagin and “chocolate” New Orleans

I grew up in New Orleans, and I still live just outside it in Metairie. Other bloggers and the media are taking Mayor Ray Nagin to task for his “New Orleans will be chocolate” speech (audio here) and there is plenty there to criticize. However, I want to make sure that a few points that he made don’t get entirely passed over. Here’s some of it from a Times-Picayune article, I’ve bolded things I want to emphasize:

Although King made a point of reaching out to white and black people, Nagin insisted Monday that if King were alive, he would urge African-Americans to stop worrying about other races and tend to their own community.

In his speech, the mayor lashed out at a shooting on Sunday afternoon that wounded three people during a second-line parade that had been designed to show unity and support for rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged city.

“Knuckleheads” were responsible for the gunfire that wounded a 34-year-old man, an 18-year-old woman and an 20-year-old man, he said. “When we come together for a second-line, we’re not going to tolerate any violence. Martin Luther King would’ve wanted it that way . . .”

Nagin went on to decry the violent crime that plagued many of the city’s African-American neighborhoods before the storm.

“It’s time for all of us good folk to stand up and say, ‘We’re tired of the violence. We’re tired of black folks killing each other,’ ” Nagin said.

“What are we doing? Why is black-on-black crime such an issue?” he continued. “Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood?”

In response to such senseless horror, King would say, “We as a people need to fix ourselves first,” said Nagin, striking a frequent theme of his speeches. “The lack of love is killing us.”

Besides respecting one another, Nagin said his listeners need to pay attention to God, who, Nagin said, expressed his anger at America last year by sending hurricane after hurricane over the land.

“Surely he’s not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretense,” Nagin said. “But surely he’s upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves, we’re not taking care of our women, and we’re not taking care of our children . . .”

Nagin went on to say that 70% of black children in New Orleans are born to single parent families. The MSM left out that inconvenient statistic, because for a black politician to call for personal responsibility and to say that fatherlessness is a serious social problem it outside the traditional story line.

Bottom line: Nagin is no saint. But he’s no devil either. The current outrage is overblown, based on cherry picking several admittedly offensive statements, but disregarding parts of the speech that were good. And frankly, focusing on Nagin’s fumble is a good way to avoid covering Hillary Clinton’s outrageous race demagogery.

Another NOLA bloggers’ take that’s well worth reading: “Mayor Nagin and the Chocolate Factory”

UPDATE: Nagin explains and apologizes. Video at The Political Teen.