New Orleans is Like a Box of Chocolates

Mayor Ray Nagin had a Forrest Gump moment when he confidently announced that New Orleans will be "chocolate" once more:

NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin told a crowd gathered at City Hall on Monday for a march honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that New Orleans will be "chocolate" again.

New Orleans proper was more than 60 percent black before Hurricane Katrina displaced about three-quarters of its population, but sparing predominantly white neighborhoods.

And in an AP Report: The mayor of New Orleans is predicting that his city will once again be "a majority African-American city."

In a Martin Luther King Day speech to a crowd at City Hall, Mayor Ray Nagin said, "It's the way God wants it to be." He said you can't have New Orleans any other way.

Before the hurricane, New Orleans was a hell hole of poverty and crime. Is he hoping to return to the good old days?

Can you imagine what would happen to any white guy who made that statement, or better yet, a white guy announcing that his city will be "vanilla" once again?

After channeling Forrest Gump, he switched personalities to Pat Robertson:

Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day.

"Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves."

To follow that logic, perhaps God was mad at what New Orleans had become and decided to "flush the john", so to speak. Maybe New Orleans wasn't "chocolate" after all.

That makes about as much sense as what Nagin is suggesting.