The nooze has it that John Edwards will announce his presidential candidacy from the 9th district in New Orleans. That he will make the run is no surprise, and the venue is logically appropriate: bush’s speech from Jackson Square was but a mirror of “Mission Accomplished” on an aircraft carrier.
Effective contrast, etc.
But I wince.
There is nothing more that I would like than to see a rebuilt New Orleans. Katrina exposed our hideous domestic tumor, much like the urban riots in the sixties did.
In the aftermath of the latter, I recall a Life magazine issue entitled “The Cry That Will be Heard”, and its examination of the lives of some African-Americans in urban ghettoes. My astonished adolescent self really believed it would be heard.
Though I am not going to deny any progress from that time, in a post-Katrina world it is a huge order for a politician to announce hope from the 9th ward in the forgotten front of New Orleans.
I like John Edwards but am going to hold my applause and my breath, thinking: you cannot go there and not be dead serious about it; about your commitment to that hallowed ground.
To be sure, I have much more faith in Edwards than that fool who bull-horned at Ground Zero.
But I’m too old too be fucked up with hope from photo-ops, too far from a teen reading Life magazine and thinking they really meant it.
