CenLamar | Est. 2006

  • Original Draft

    Good afternoon. I was born and raised right up the road in Alexandria- and I know this may sound like I’m pandering to the audience- but I promise this is true. I probably shouldn’t be admitting this. A few years ago, I worked as an assistant for Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy. Many of y’all probably know Jacques Chances are: Many of y’all are probably related to him. All the time, folks from out of town would ask me, “Where’s the best restaurant in Alexandria?” I should disclose that, even though I wore many hats in my job with the Mayor,…

  • I Was Smeared Online for Being Disabled: How the Internet Amplifies the Politics of Hate

    I Was Smeared Online for Being Disabled: How the Internet Amplifies the Politics of Hate

    My father was a big believer in making New Year’s resolutions. At the end of every year, he’d set audacious, nearly impossible goals for himself- writing a book, learning a foreign language, recording an album, running for political office, training for a marathon. On December 31st of every year, my father was the most ambitious man in America. But he wasn’t delusional. Don’t get me wrong. He was perfectly capable of doing everything he aspired to do, and in fairness to him, he’d balance out his outsized resolutions with other, more manageable, and more pedestrian goals. I think he just…

  • Preface: Meditations from a Slidable Chair

    Preface: Meditations from a Slidable Chair

    Two years ago, a late night conversation that I had on Twitter with a Tulane graduate made national news the following afternoon. We had been exchanging tweets for a couple of days about the attempt to hack the phone lines of Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans. But he wasn’t bantering with me simply because, as a Tulane grad, he was interested in Louisiana politics. James O’Keefe, the young man behind the failed phone hack, was generally considered to be his protege. Forty minutes after he sent a message to me, apologizing for previously calling me “a putz,” in the…