Since the mid-1960’s, I have interacted with six Louisiana Governors—John McKeithen, Edwin Edwards, David Treen, Buddy Roemer, Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco. My relationships ranged from casual to friendly to downright hostile. Edwin Edwards falls into the hostile category. After a couple of exposés that failed to meet his approval, he anointed me with the label, “derelict gunslinger.” The title refers to my checkered past and occupation as a muckraker.

I’ve never met Governor Smarty Pants, aka Bobby Jindal. Not there haven’t been opportunities. When he isn’t travelling across the country to raise campaign funds, promote himself as a potential national GOP candidate for something (preferably the Presidency and/or Vice Presidency), he is either searching for television cameras, giving his Jesus testimony in churches or passing out medals to military veterans, which is the Governor’s latest publicity ploy. He needs to adopt a campaign slogan of “Anywhere but Baton Rouge.”

I’m a four-year military veteran—a partially disabled veteran, in fact, as a result of being to close to jet aircraft and loud explosions. But despite tales I told barroom buddies in my drinking days long ago, the hearing loss I suffered did not involve great heroics. I deserved no extra medals then. Or now. Nonetheless, thanks for the offer, Governor. But I pass. The money can be better utilized keeping you in the Capitol figuring out ways to stop Louisiana’s descent to the status of a third world country.

The “third world”  analogy is not original. It was recently used by my former television colleague Barry Erwin, now head of the Council for a Better Louisiana. His remarks related to the Governor’s unending demands for slashing education budgets. From pre-school to college and beyond, the future is bleak. The only ray of sunshine is the LSU Tigers, which for many people is more important anyway. But that could change after football season opens this coming Saturday, meaning that the burden is on Coach Les Miles to give Louisianans something to brag about.

To quote our President, “Let me be perfectly clear.” I have not a clue of how  to deal with Louisiana’s financial dilemma. But it seems that Governor Smarty Pants could offer a plan better than cut, slash and eliminate. After all, the guy is an Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar. And that may be the problem. More than any Louisiana Governor I’ve known, there seems to be a disconnect between Jindal, the legislature and the people who elected him.

Instead of focusing on the state’s financial problems during the most recent legislative session, the Governor stalked television cameras on the gulf coast. Throughout the efforts to deal with the BP oil spill catastrophe, he stepped before cameras on a daily basis to show-off his speed-talking skills. Some of his updates were barely comprehensible, but 24-hour cable news networks gave him the face time on national TV that he coveted.

Perhaps Governor Smarty Pant’s constant presence at the scene was helpful, but I haven’t figured out in what way. Certainly, his absence from Baton Rouge deprived the legislature of any kind of leadership. The only measure that seemed to remotely interest the administration was maintaining as much secrecy as possible with respect to Governor’s office. Come to think of it, Jindal might be positioning himself for a CIA appointment.

Whether Kathleen Blanco could have done a better job in handling the state’s financial crisis is an unknown. Given her background as a teacher and her interest in the state’s education system, I’m guessing she would have been far more aggressive in protecting Louisiana’s academic programs. Unfortunately, though, Hurricane Katrina did her in—unfairly maybe.

Katrina’s impact on Blanco falls under my heading of reporting that I never completed. In 2006, I did preliminary research for a Dallas, Texas production company that was in the early stages of a proposed movie length Katrina documentary. As it turned out, the project was too little, too late. Spike Lee’s HBO documentary was already in production.

Before the the Dallas group abandoned its project, I reviewed a lot of material, and spent time with Governor Blanco and several Administration officials. I came away under the  impression that she was the victim of circumstances such as the storm altering its course overnight after many residents refused to evacuate, levees giving way, news reporters playing “gotcha” and politicians trying to divert blame for their dereliction of duties on others.

At my first meeting with Governor Blanco, she made the point that if the levees protecting New Orleans had held, the major story of 2005 would have been Rita—the devastating hurricane that struck southwestern Louisiana a few weeks after Katrina. Although the force of Katrina inflicted heavy damage on the area, it was the flood that caused most of the devastation.

Regardless, Blanco was blamed for Corps of Engineers miscalculations, FEMA’s failures, and the tepid response to the tragedy by the Bush Administration. Because of the public’s perception of her “weakness” in responding to the storm, Blanco’s re-election chances diminished. Her departure from politics made it easy sailing for Bobby Jindal.

So far, Governor Smarty Pants has done a fine job getting on TV, visiting churches and presenting medals to old soldiers. One day, maybe he will get around to leading the state out of its crisis. 

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

There’s many people in the world just like our Henny-Penny,

They panic when they listen to the news,

They think the sky is falling and we’re all about to die,

I’d say they have the Henny-Penny-Blues.

The Lightnin’ Hopkins song should be adopted as the anthem of the Tea Party. “The sky is falling” iseems to be the mantra of the loudest folks at tea party demonstrations and other events. It is no wonder. Doomsday prophecies dominate the nation’s airwaves and cable news channels. And although the heaviest dose of negativism and uncivility penetrates the right ear, the left ear drum also takes a beating. Whine, bitch, complain. There seems to be no escape.

This certainly is not the best of times. Nor is it the worst of times. My IRA is proof. Unfortunately, though, our society lives on instant gratification. Patience? What the hell is that? President Obama promises a slow recovery of the economy. But he should have dealt with that problem yesterday. Worse, the President delivered on his campaign promises. Health care legislation and finance reform were passed by a Democrats in Congress, despite opposition from a party that votes no on bathroom breaks.

I recognize the contradiction in my vent. Whine, bitch, complain. But I duck when passing mirrors to avoid seeing myself as others might see me. Besides, I’m a journalist. That gives me a free pass to point fingers at other people, create conflict and act like I have good sense. These are God given journalistic privileges. If you don’t believe me, just watch television. Listen to the radio. Or—I know this is radical in the Internet age—read newspapers.

So where am I going with this rant? I’m not exactly sure where my fingers will take me. More than likely, it’s in the direction of politics, pollsters and journalists. One of the qualities I admire in Obama is his apparent tendency to ignore polls. At least, in the short-term. His knee seems to remain relatively still in the face of opposition to issues such as health reform, immigration, drilling moratoriums, etc. Unlike his predecessor who put on a flight suit to declare our victory in Iraq (some victory) Obama didn’t don a scuba outfit and dive into the Gulf of Mexico to plug the BP oil leak. Maybe he expected Louisiana Governor Smarty Pants to put his finger in the well head.  

I have no doubt that Obama reads the polls. Actually, he doesn’t need to. News reporters and pundits read them obsessively and pass along the results when questioning the President. Even if he doesn’t care that people believe he is the worst President since the one yesterday. Or the one tomorrow. Even though journalists comprising the Washington elite don’t cover a hurricanes, they still bend with the breeze—most of which is generated polls.

In a weird sort of way, Fox “News” is refreshing. Bet the readers of the blog never believed I would make such a statement. But like patients in mental asylums, Fox folks see the world differently than the norm. In my book, that is okay. It just gives me additional things to bitch about in the blog. Thirty seconds watching Glenn Beck provides enough material to last for days.

I relate to oddballs because my investigative reporting career was built on contrarianism. At times when all my colleagues were jumping on the bandwagon of conventional wisdom, I hung around to ask one more question about an issue and/or individual. One more question led to two, then three and so on. The results were often surprising. As evidence, check the journalism awards on the walls of my home office. But be sure to knock. Sometimes my hair is mussed.

In some respects, the only difference between the Fox folks and me is that I based my exposés on facts rather than politics. Sadly, facts are not much in vogue today. Especially on cable news networks. All three—I’m being generous in calling MSNBC a news network—are filled programming with talking heads. Fox provides forum for every known Republican politician. MSNBC’s format of all opinion, all the time caters to Democrats. CNN tries to play the middle ground by encouraging guests from the left and right to engae in fistfights. Instead, the conflicts are pissing matches. I fully expect CNN to raise the stakes by recruiting Jerry Springer. He could take the place of John King. 

By the way (notice that I didn’t use the shortcut btw to make me seem like I was a mod kind of guy), what’s with John King—no relation to the network’s mummy in residence, Larry King. John is CNN’s replacement for nutty Lou Dobbs. Although King the younger claims Massachussets as his birthplace, my suspicion is he was born in a taxicab on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House while his mother played video games. He is consumed with Presidential politics and digital devices that are designed to totally confuse viewers. I Tivo the show and use it as a cure for insomnia.

But enough of this rambling discourse. I warned you that I didn’t know where my fingers were going to take me. My dilemma now is coming up with a clever close to the post, something that relates to the title. I never attended journalsim school but I think there is supposed to be a bit of relevance between the opening and the finale.

How about this? I’ve rattled on today without any forethought given to what the hell I was going to say.

BTW (they years just peeled away), tomorrow is re-run day as I try to escape the dog days of summer by heading out of town.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.