I hate to disillusion subscribers to The Town Talk, but the truth is that after their parent company, Gannett, laid off Cynthia Jardon, their editorial board is essentially a one-man operation (Before she was laid off, I had criticized the paper’s editorial board for consisting of only Cynthia and the Executive Editor, Paul Carty). Usually, a “board” indicates more than one person, but Gannett apparently wants to enjoy some editorial control over the definition of an “editorial board.”
Whatever.
Quoting:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will give his State of the State address Wednesday in Monroe, home to fast-expanding CenturyLink, the nation’s third-largest telecom. Jindal will have the pleasant task of reviewing a punch list of Louisiana success stories, the accumulating accolades for Louisiana Economic Development strategies and tactics, and a statewide unemployment rate that is down, trending down and consistently below the national average.
President Barack Obama will not have it so easy.
Can we, for once, be honest? Is that really too much to ask, Town Talk? This is total foolishness.
I’ve sat through enough of Secretary Moret’s poorly-produced PowerPoint presentations. Jindal and Moret have done absolutely nothing of substance and absolutely nothing at all for Alexandria or Central Louisiana. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Squat. Nada.
From the very beginning of his campaign for Governor, Jindal insisted that Louisiana was a “rich state,” despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We ain’t rich, Pious Piyush; we’re poor. We’re really poor. All the call centers in the world won’t help you make your point, Govna.
Meanwhile, though, you can count on your friends at Alexandria’s paper of record to disparage and insult what the President of the United States could say– before he even utters a word– while enjoying the support of their tone-deaf adulation of CenturyLink in Monroe, as if it represents some sort of triumph of American capitalism.
Why didn’t Governor Jindal want to deliver his remarks in St. John Parish? Why not brag about Nucor? Or what about his success in convincing Albemarle to relocate its corporate headquarters in Baton Rouge or the amazing poultry plant up north? Uh-huh.
Wake up, Town Talk. Your long slumber should have already been replenishing and restorative. Gannett, guys and gals, you know what proves you’re phoning it in? This:
Obama’s words will be heartfelt, but they will be out of sync with the look on his face. He is worried, as he should be. His polished rhetoric is only that; and some $900 billion in “stimulus” spending has handed out some “cash for clunkers,” bought taxpayer control of General Motors and caused some high-profile boondoggles.
I understand Alexandria currently prohibits fortunetellers and soothsayers. It may be a dumb law, but The Town Talk obviously violates it. Here’s what Obama will say. This is how he will appear. Apparently, it doesn’t matter to them that the GM “boondoggle,” their main example, was brought to us by George W. Bush… or that it actually worked. Why doesn’t The Town Talk mention the now-infamous “bermdoggle”? Too close to home?
Fortunately, for Bobby Jindal, The Town Talk is owned, operated, written, and published by corporatist interlopers. And maybe that proves his point: We’re a rich state, rich in fiction writers… wow, if only there was a tax credit; Walker Percy would have died a mega-millionaire.
CenLamar 
Clearly there are enough people in the region that want to hear their ill formed thoughts echoed. Thus the paper continues.
No, there are, apparently, plenty of people in central Louisiana that own parrots.
Gotta say: It’s a little bizarre how people react whenever someone uses Jindal’s given name. Somewhere, there must be a Sociology grad student hammering away on a dissertation about the way our political culture treats and responds to names that reflect ethnicity.
I remember clearly how conservatives like Limbaugh and Coulter emphasized Obama’s middle name, Hussein. And some folks, myself included, recognized the not-so-thinly veiled implications of this. And then, something remarkable happened: Thousands and thousands of Obama supporters changed their middle name on Facebook to Hussein, a gesture of solidarity and a clear indication that young people celebrate diversity. It was really cool.
I think it’s really interesting how some Louisianans react to Governor Jindal’s legal name, Piyush Armit Jindal. Sometimes, it seems to make even his biggest supporters uncomfortable and defensive. There’s a cognitive dissonance here that really speaks to the core of identity politics.
One day, hopefully, we will all get to the point where there’s no such thing as an authentically American name. Honestly, I’ve always that Piyush is a cool name. Yes, it reads a lot like pious, hence the play on words. There should be nothing wrong with that. Jindal doesn’t have a “racist” name, and mentioning his legal name- as long as it’s done with the right intention- is not racist, of course. If you think it is, then you should probably sit down and really contemplate why you hold such a belief. Is it because you reflexively ascribe racism into any criticism or is it because you think there’s something wrong with the man’s legal name that should make it off-limits? Bobby, of course, is a nickname he gave himself as a child; he named himself after Bobby Brady from “The Brady Bunch.”
I see one major distinction between the use of Obama’s middle name and Jindal’s first name. Unfortunately for Obama, Hussein is also the last name of the tyrant that we spent years fighting. That’s why his critics employed it. It was an implicit and subtle reminder that he shared a name with a brutal dictator. And we were all supposed to be afraid. Very afraid. It didn’t work, thankfully. And in some respects. it had the opposite effect (see again the Facebook response).
All of this is just a reminder of how far we have to go in Louisiana. You can’t even create a silly pun from our Governor’s legal name without being labeled a racist. Give me a break. It’s the name on his birth certificate. When he was at school, it was the name they called on the class roster. I find it particularly amusing that this criticism against my use of Piyush primarily comes from a man who has given me a nickname based on my legal first name. But I doubt he ever realized his hypocrisy or the irony.
Sorry Chronos. Not directed at you but I’m on my phone and could only hit Reply, instead of Compose a New Comment.