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In what has to be the most bizarre address by a Louisiana politician since Governor Earl Long's infamous "sapsucker" screed on the floor of the legislature, Mayor Nagin delivered a speech that did himself and the city he represents few favors.

Nagin, whose speaking style differed from his normal manner of address in which he seemed Farrakhanesque in his methodical delivery, mirrored the Nation of Islam leader in loony content as well. All the mayor was missing was a bow-tie and a cadre of burly bodyguards.

While speaking at a Martin Luther King Day event on Monday, the mayor declared that he had a conversation with the slain civil rights leader, who expressed his disappointment over a number of matters, including the decision by Jefferson Parish policemen to prevent New Orleans hurricane victims from crossing over the Mississippi River Bridge.

But it gets better.

He proclaimed that God was angry at the United States for the war in Iraq and sent three massive hurricanes to the gulf coast as a chastisement.

Nagin added that another motivation behind the Almighty's punishment was the high-rate of illegitimacy amongst the city's black population and the spate of violence that has been an unfortunate trademark of New Orleans life and most recently reared its head in Sunday's "second line" shooting that wounded three people.

The thin-skinned mayor managed to work in a self-lament over the heat he has caught from other black leaders who oppose the modest reforms he has pushed through during his administration.

Nagin also remarked that New Orleans will once again be a "chocolate" city, a coarse demographic description that would have cost any white Republican his or her seat in Congress, and that God had intended it to be that way.

The mayor's "authentic urban political gibberish" is a crass attempt to lure black voters, whose political representatives have publicly questioned his "ethnic loyalty," under his campaign banner in the face of two significant white opponents to his re-election.

It's also a not so subtle reminder why Nagin should not be returned to office for another term short of being locked into a runoff with a less attractive alternative...say a former member of the Orleans Parish School Board.

Nagin's racial demagoguery must be a profound disappointment to white voters who were responsible for his election in 2002 and will not help the city garner additional Federal assistance from the Republican, or to use a Naginism, vanilla, controlled Congress.

I don't believe that Nagin was sincere in his provocative comments. After all, Nagin's rise in Cox Communications would not have happened had the one-time corporate officer used such language in his business dealings.

However, that he felt a need to clothe his criticisms of the black community's most pressing problems with Bush-bashing and declarations of racial dominance betrays a political cowardice that New Orleans does not need in its mayor during a time when many critical decisions that will impact the future of New Orleans are being made.

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