I got up at 4:15 this morning after going to bed at 11:30 – I guess I’m only allowed one 9 hour night’s sleep a week. It would be great to get up every morning around 5 (not 4:15) because dawn is such a beautiful time on the bayou. The clouds are tinged with pink and the shadows on the water stand out more. We did our routine – feed the Bean (or Black Dog as she goes by these days), water J’s plants, and then take our stroll across the Magnolia Bridge and around the bayou. As we were coming to the other side of the bridge I saw where someone had spray painted “BUSH SUCKS” so that all the cars going by on the street could be greeted by it.
I thought of last night – around 10:30 when I was finally finishing up work – G called me to rant about Vitter. Her beef is that she disagrees with most everything about him but after the storm he has been the one who has come forward the most to lead and regardless of his party affiliation, she was willing to back him based on that alone. But the fact that he chose to be a Republican – a party that has applied a no tolerance zone to every human vice and now that is what might be his downfall and keep him from helping this state recover – makes her sick.
Me too. The fact is that when you set your self righteous benchmark up so high everyone around you seems like a failure, even yourself. Vitter is now caught in his own quagmire – the Republican zero tolerance quicksand – of his own party’s making. But who suffers here – we the people of Louisiana – who can’t get a break when it comes to leadership.
This morning, the front page of the Times Picayune was about how neighborhoods are coming back – NOT BY SOME MASTER PLAN – despite all the architect gurus who have come to this city to help, despite the lack of leadership from our elected officials, or rather in spite of all of what has happened here, each part of the city that is clawing its way back is happening at the hands of ordinary people like you and me who have a zero tolerance for living anywhere else but here in New Orleans.