Former New Orleans Recovery Director Ed Blakely has done it again. He has made condescending, racist and inflammatory comments that are harmful to the City of New Orleans. In an interview with CalTV of the University of California-Berkeley, Blakely said that New Orleans residents are “racists” and that white people sense “blood in the water” post-Katrina and are working to take back political power. Blakely warned that white were trying to “put their foot back on black people’s throats,” and that race riots were possible. These comments were irresponsible and completely divisive. Blakely laments racism, but continues to make comments which exacerbate race problems. His ludicrous statements were reckless and vast generalizations about the white community in New Orleans. Blakely owes an apology to all of the citizens of New Orleans for his recent statements and in this case an apology to the white community and who together with African Americans and members of other racial and ethnic groups have suffered and sacrificed to rebuild New Orleans

In the interview, Blakely criticized city workers, blasted the state and federal government and blamed everyone else for the slow recovery. He refused to face the reality that he made the problem much worse by his lack of leadership.

Blakely was hired as Recovery Director, yet he continued to live in Australia and only worked for New Orleans part-time. It is no surprise that recovery has been weak for Blakely spent much of his time as Recovery Director flying all over the world and making frequent forays back to his family in Australia. It was ludicrous for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to hire a person who lived in Australia for such an important position. Being Recovery Director is a full-time job which required a full-time presence in New Orleans. Blakely could never fulfill the requirements of his job partly because he was not in the office enough. He claimed that the office shutdown when he was not in town, which means that for much of the last few years, the office was about as productive as Ed Blakely.

Adding insult to injury, Blakely was paid an outrageous salary of $475,000 for incomplete and incompetent work. He should be thankful for the opportunity to lead the recovery of one of the world’s most unique cities, yet he has always been more interested in trashing New Orleans. In interviews with the New York Times and other media outlets, Blakely has claimed New Orleans is a “third world country,” with an “economy entirely made up of t-shirts that is our major import and export.” For good measure, he claimed that people here were “insular,” and “buffoons.” The real buffoons are Blakely and his boss Mayor Nagin who have harmed the recovery effort by their incendiary and racist comments.

In this TV interview, Blakely said that New Orleans “isn’t likely” to be around in 100 years due to the threat of hurricanes and the Mississippi River. This kind of statement is negative and defeatist and certainly will not encourage any business to invest in New Orleans. Clearly Blakely is trying to destroy the chances of New Orleans to recover.

Since New Orleans has survived for 300 years, there is no doubt it can survive if people work together to address flood protection and coastal erosion problems. Without action, Blakely’s prediction will come true, but anyone who loves New Orleans obviously believes that the city can not only be saved, but also can prosper in the future.

Blakely continues to spread around plenty of blame for the slow recovery. He criticized city workers, and blasted the state and federal government. It was another attempt to deflect blame from his inept performance.

The real problem was that Blakely was the wrong person for the job. He never accomplished one concrete goal and instead made outlandish promises that he could not keep. For example, he promised a robust rebuilding effort with “cranes in the sky,” but, not surprisingly, none materialized. In an interview with Australian radio, Blakely touted false population numbers and claimed that the pre-Katrina population numbers were fudged to “get certain benefits.” He would not let one interview pass without an insulting or inaccurate statement about New Orleans.

Overall, Blakely was an embarrassment from the day he arrived in New Orleans, a perfect compliment to Mayor Nagin. Both of them over promised and under delivered and in the process made a fool of themselves with asinine comments.

Thankfully, Blakely has left town and the countdown to the end of the Nagin era has already started. Unfortunately, this dynamic duo of incompetence and arrogance seriously hindered the recovery of New Orleans.  Blakely and Nagin made the job of Mayor much tougher for the next person who will have to clean up the mess they left behind. 

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Jeff Crouere is a native of New Orleans, LA and he is the host of a Louisiana based program, “Ringside Politics,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Fri. and 10:00 p.m. Sun. on WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station, and 7 till 11 a.m.weekdays on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans and the Northshore. For more information, visit his web site at www.ringsidepolitics.com. E-mail him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com

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