by JAMES GILL- Times-Picayune (excerpt)
In Norway they may think that President Barack Obama has a great knack for peace, but around here his forte seems to be stirring up strife. New Orleans is mad because Obama’s visit tomorrow will be little more than a whistlestop. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is mad because New Orleans gets all the attention, such as it is, while the lingering effects of Katrina over there are ignored. And from southwest Louisiana comes the cry, “What about Rita, Gustav and Ike? The president really needs to take a look at Cameron Parish.” Obama is also being denounced for an apparent lack of curiosity about the incredible shrinking wetlands. The original announced White House plan was for Obama to fly way down yonder merely in order to hold a “town hall” before beetling off to California for a fund raiser. Members of our congressional delegation took turns demanding evidence of a little more concern for the state of the recovery, and the protests did not go unheeded. Soon came the announcement that Obama would make time to visit the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School in the Lower 9th Ward. That did not smooth over any feathers in other parts of the region, where hordes of bedraggled storm victims grow weary of the constant harping on the Lower 9th. Congressman Steve Scalise called a press conference at the 17th Street Canal in Lakeview to declare, in an authentically New Orleans metaphor, that his constituents deserved more than a “drive-through daiquiri summit.”
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