Someone who could be safely sitting at home, counting his money and watching tapes of his old shows, namely Bill Cosby, is to be commended for going out and giving the people of New Orleans a different message from the one provided by so-called leaders like Sharpton, Jackson and Nagin.

Cosby, whose criticism of some aspects of modern African-American culture has stirred controversy in recent years, told a rally headed by black leaders that the city needed to look at the “wound” it had before Katrina struck.

“It’s painful, but we can’t cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound,” Cosby told the rally of about 2,000 people in front of the city’s convention center.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you had the highest murder rate, unto each other. You were dealing drugs to each other. You were impregnating our 13-, 12-, 11-year-old children,” he said.

“What kind of a village is that?”

Meanwhile Jackson and Sharpton railed on about the “disenfranchisement” of those who no longer live in New Orleans. Nagin must be concerned that he won’t be automatically re-elected as he figures he deserves for the fine job he has done.

The import of Bill Cosby’s remarks is underscored by this story in the Houston Chronicle: As New Orleans is revived, so are its crime problems.

The wail of police sirens is back, and gunfire once again punctuates the night. As drug dealers move into flood-damaged houses, alarmed residents say that in the past few weeks, they have begun to sense a return to the bad old days before Hurricane Katrina, when crime was an omnipresent straitjacket on life in New Orleans.

In a city that once led the nation in homicides per capita, crime has long been a leading indicator of its health and prospects – an unavoidable part of the equation for a walk around the block or a trip to the store.

That diminished greatly after the storm, when hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated. But there are signs that New Orleans’ past may be returning, with a new twist.

Police officials say the post-Katrina landscape of abandoned houses, stretching block after block, is being incorporated into a revived drug trade, with the empty dwellings offering an unexpected convenience to dealers returning from Houston and Atlanta.

I’m going down the river
Down to New Orleans
They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don’t know what “all right” even means

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• “Remember New Orleans”
• Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
• It’s Unbelievable