Louisiana Turns a Corner

In 1991, my old Ford Futura had a "Vote for the Crook, It's Important" bumpersticker on it, signifying support for the corrupt and contemptible Edwin Edwards' candidacy for governor of Louisiana. This was a bit odd since I was a registered voter in Mississippi, not Louisiana, and since I had (and have) nothing but disdain for Edwards. Still, he was running against former Klansman and American Nazi Party sympathizer David Duke, and it was a real contest. Things have changed.

Last night, post-Katrina Louisiana signaled that the state has turned a corner to a post-Duke, post-Edwards era with the election of the nation's first Indian-American governor, Bobby Jindal. The election of Jindal, a conservative pro-life Republican who will also now be the nation's youngest governor, was a cakewalk at the polls but not on the campaign trail. The Louisiana Democratic Party insisted on referring to Jindal as "Piyush," using his given Indian first name rather than his preferred "Bobby" (which he chose from watching The Brady Bunch).

When the veiled references to a former Hindu sitting in Huey Long's chair produced nothing but yawns from the voters, Jindal's opponents turned to his Roman Catholicism. Citing Catholic apologetics articles Jindal has written for the New Oxford Review, advertisements run in heavily Baptist northern Louisiana deemed Jindal "insulting" to "Louisiana's Protestants." Baptists and Pentecostals, though, stood by Jindal.

Louisiana is just one state and, I'll be the first to admit, not representative of the rest of the nation. But Louisiana just elected the son of Indian immigrants who looks like he's twelve years-old on an ethics reform platform. They turned aside race-baiting and old Catholic-Protestant rivalries in the process. And they didn't even have to elect a crook to do it.

Comments

[Michael-2]

Yes, what got him in was his reference to his close call 4 years ago when he was edged out by media dramatizations by the Democratic Kathleen Blanco. Yes, people would have liked to have had their vote back.

Maybe the state is finally leaving South America to join North America.

Mary Landrieu, the U.S. Senator comes up for election in 2008 and she may also see a hard Republican challenge.

[Stuart Koehl]

Comparing Louisiana to Latin America is unfair--to Latin America!

[David Gray]

>Comparing Louisiana to Latin America is unfair--to Latin America!

Having spent six months in Honduras I'd have to say that isn't remotely true (although I imagine it was intended more for humour than insight).

[Judy Warner]

Bobby Jindal dealt with the anti-Catholic ads by going to Protestant pastors and talking to them. It turned out none of them really had a problem with him anyway.

He is a smart cookie -- he was head of the University of Louisiana university system when he was in his twenties. More important, he seems to be very principled. I am looking forward to seeing how he governs.

[William Tighe]

What is Mary Landrieu's church? She's from a Catholic family, and sometimes seems to speak as though she's a Catholic, but before she was elected to the Senate I read a report that she'd left the Catholic Church and become an Episcopalian -- in part, in repurgance at the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion and the duties of Catholics in all and any walks of life (including politicians) to adhere to that teaching.

[William Tighe]

A friend just sent me this link to an article that Jindal wrote while he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford in 1994, "the End of the Oxford Movement" which you can read here:

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1994/9401fea2.asp

[Christopher]

"Having spent six months in Honduras I'd have to say that isn't remotely true"

Having lived in New Orleans for a year in a half (through Katrina - moved December of that year) I can affirm is more than "remotely" true, it is a solid "partly" true. New Orleans was (and is) about as close as you can get to a third world country and still remain inside the US. Everything from government to street corner culture is at least half third world...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Everything from government to street corner culture is at least half third world...<<<

Shall we split the difference and say that New Orleans is definitely "Second World"?

[Juli]

The Louisiana Democratic Party insisted on referring to Jindal as "Piyush," using his given Indian first name rather than his preferred "Bobby"

That sort of thing is tacky and low - reminds me of the Republicans who insist on referring to Barack *Hussein* Obama.

(which he chose from watching The Brady Bunch).

Hmmm ... speaking of American culture (as we were on another thread) ...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>That sort of thing is tacky and low - reminds me of the Republicans who insist on referring to Barack *Hussein* Obama.<<<

I have always wondered about the attraction of Arabic names to black Americans. After all, it was the Arabs who controlled large portions of the slave trade, and Arabs who continue to enslave blacks to this very day. Yet Christianity, the one faith which did more than any other to eradicate slavery throughout the world, is seen as "the slaveowners' religion". Same goes for their infatuation with Swahili, an African-Arabic lingua franca devised specifically to facilitate transactions in the slave trade. But then, people who would embrace something as hokey as Kwanza will fall for anything.

[Juli]

I have always wondered about the attraction of Arabic names to black Americans.

I don't know, but Obama's father was Kenyan (and his mother was a white American).

Tangent: In terms of converts to religions and the names they choose, I'm often struck by how converts to Orthodox Christianity tend to be fascinated by what seems exotic about the tradition - as an example, those who take new "church names" seem much more likely to choose the name of a Russian saint than to go with something biblical (and if they do choose something biblical, it's not likely to be Jonathan, Paul, Elizabeth, or Miriam).

[Judy Warner]

>>> have always wondered about the attraction of Arabic names to black Americans.<<<

It started in the 1960s with the black power movement, when blacks deliberately tried to remove themselves from American culture and Black Muslims gained influence. The black kids I went to elementary school with in Philadelphia were named Mary, John, Albert, Barbara and so on. Only one family in the entire almost-all-black school had weird names, and they weren't Arabic ones. There were a few names that black kids had more often than white ones -- Leroy, Tyrone and Gregory are some I recall -- but they were still ordinary names. I was amused when I taught school in England in the 1960s and the black, mostly Jamaican kids had names like Trevor and Cyril. And Winston, of course.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>It started in the 1960s with the black power movement, when blacks deliberately tried to remove themselves from American culture and Black Muslims gained influence.<<<

Apparently not even the genocide of black Africans at the hands of Arabs in Darfur will disabuse them of the fantasy that Islam is the religion of liberation for blacks?

>>> I was amused when I taught school in England in the 1960s and the black, mostly Jamaican kids had names like Trevor and Cyril. And Winston, of course.<<<

My daughter is always flabbergasted when she watches BBC shows when some black character opens his mouth and Oxford English emerges. She thinks that is so cool, especially in contrast to what passes for English among too many black kids around here.

[Juli]

My daughter is always flabbergasted when she watches BBC shows when some black character opens his mouth and Oxford English emerges. She thinks that is so cool, especially in contrast to what passes for English among too many black kids around here.

When I first visited England (and France) as a college student, I had a hard time not thinking that little children who spoke with British accents (or spoke fluent French) must be precocious or something.

I also found it disorienting to hear Chinese-immigrant restaurant workers in London speaking w/English accents - though I never thought it was odd to hear Chinese Americans (or other immigrants here) speak English with American accents ...

When he was in Japan on business once, my brother met a black man from the West Indies, another business traveler - and he spoke absolutely fluent Japanese ... certainly not what the Japanese expect from foreigners generally.

[Judy Warner]

>>>My daughter is always flabbergasted when she watches BBC shows when some black character opens his mouth and Oxford English emerges. <<<

I was teaching in east London and the kids, black, white and brown, spoke pure Cockney. I had to pick up something of a Cockney accent myself so they would understand me.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>When he was in Japan on business once, my brother met a black man from the West Indies, another business traveler - and he spoke absolutely fluent Japanese ... certainly not what the Japanese expect from foreigners generally.<<<

We are friends with a family that just adopted a 12-year old Russian orphan, whose English was rather limited and was having a hard time adjusting, so my wife and daughter, who speak Russia (which the girl's adoptive parents don't) took her and her mother out for a day on the town, which included a visit to the mall. Well, one of the things she had never seen in Russia was a black man, so when she saw a black police officer at the mall, she was absolutely fascinated--even went up to him to see if that was his skin color or if it was paint. This required some quick explanations, in both English and Russian.

[Joe Long]

I've got a genetically-Chinese friend with a strong Southern accent - does tend to confuse and dismay some folks.

I would have to say that, on the scale of political insults, calling a man by his given name ranks pretty low, be it "Hussein" or "Pinyush". (Or "Mitt". What kind of name is "Mitt"?!) Great to see some change in Louisiana, and the backfire of the religious-smear tactics; the Democrats badly mischaracterized the voters they were trying to influence, overestimating their malice and/or underestimating their intelligence severely. (Small blame there; they're used to dealing with their own base, and apparently know other groups primarily as caricatures.)

Barack...Barak...the guy in Judges who sort of effaces himself to let Deborah take charge; a type of the male lieutenant to a strong female. Just a mild observation...

[Joe Long]

On this odd trend of using public figure's current or former names against their wishes:

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/25/olbermann-maglagong-maglagong-maglagong-nyah-nyah-nyah/

Michelle Malkin, ne Maglalang, declared "worst person in the world" - and mocked by American leftists, with a mispronunciation of her maiden name.

Unlike Pinyush or Hussein, this one actually gets the name wrong, which arguably makes it a different category. The suggestion in all three cases, however, is "this public figure has something to hide".

The Pinyush and Maglagang usages by leftists, also show an odd and misplaced confidence that drawing attention to a conservative's ethnicity will undermine his support base - as if Jindal voters or Malkin fans were not only largely vicious bigots, but vicious bigots so stupid they had simply not realized the ethnicity of the public figure they support!

[Yaknyeti]

"Shall we split the difference and say that New Orleans is definitely "Second World"?"

I thought the First, Second, and Third World designations originally referred to US & Europe, the USSR & its Communist allies, and everyone else (respectively). Because the everyone else tended to be the industrially developing nations, "Third World" acquired that connotation.

If that's the case, New Orleans isn't the first coastal city in the US I'd call Second World.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>If that's the case, New Orleans isn't the first coastal city in the US I'd call Second World.<<<

Well, there are quite a few one-party "people's democracies" in a number of cities. Going from North to South, I would point to Bahstin, Noo Yawk (less so than in the past), Philly, Baltimore, and Dee Cee. Toss in Chicago, El Lay, Portland and Seattle for good measure, and you have a veritable Comintern in your own backyard.