Editor’s note: LouisianaVoice occasionally has guest columnists. The following contribution was written by Dayne Sherman, a writer and public speaker who resides in Pontchatoula. You are invited to visit his website at: daynesherman.com.
Dear Bobby,
I hate to break the bad news. No, it’s not about Gov. Mitt Romney having the good sense not to pick you as VP, nor that you weren’t even on his shortlist of candidates, nor that you didn’t land a prime speaking spot at the RNC in Tampa. The bad news is something a conservative activist told me the other day. On Aug. 12 your political career ended.
Yes, not becoming Romney’s VP was the end of your political ascendancy. Blame Romney or blame yourself, but it’s caput.
Maybe you’ve already figured it out. Melinda Deslatte of the Associated Press ran a story with the word “bunker” in the title regarding your administration’s activities right now. Do your handlers let you read the newspaper in the bunker? I hope you have cable TV and can get ESPN, air-conditioning, too. But you need some reality therapy in a bad way.
A week ago The Dead Pelican website ran an unscientific poll. I suspect the readers are mostly conservatives. Did they let you see it in the bunker?
The poll asked a single question: “Will Bobby Jindal continue to be a rising star on the national stage, now that Paul Ryan has been picked for V.P.?”
Out of 1,079 votes cast, 68 % of the respondents said either “No” or “Who is Bobby Jindal?” Only 32 % said that your star will continue to rise.
Oh, my!
I think folks are catching on, conservatives especially. One Republican media figure recently said to me, “Dayne, I believe Bobby Jindal is going to kill the Louisiana Republican Party.” He wasn’t happy in the least.
The problem, though, is how sad a moral specimen you’ve become, an empty suit, a nihilist with only one belief left.
John Maginnis, the dean of Louisiana political columnists, opined that perhaps being present at the college exorcism and writing candidly about it may have been your very last unscripted act.
Bobby, you only believe in yourself. Can’t you see it?
I suspect you don’t have a friend in the world to tell you the truth about anything important.
And how does it feel to be used by Romney? According to reports, he didn’t even call you to say he was sorry for picking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin). He called five other shortlisters but not you. He picked Ryan, a man with a single hero: Ayn Rand. Rand is a writer Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners calls “a philandering Russian atheist.” But at least Rand and Ryan have an ethos. A horrible ethos but an ethos nevertheless. An ethos is something very similar to an ethic or sense of morality, and a way of life in a community.
Bobby, you don’t have an ethos. There’s some interesting dialogue in The Big Lebowski, a great movie about friendship. You should watch it posthaste, and pay close attention to the “ethos” dialogue between The Dude, Walter, an Danny. Nihilism is bad, in part, because it leaves you friendless. Who cares to be a buddy to a nihilist? It escapes me. But if you had an honest friend, he might tell you the truth: you’re a caricature of the worst sort of politician on the make, and it has gotten old to Louisianans. You’ve sold your soul for personal political advancement, and everyone seems to know it but you.
Have you heard there is a giant sinkhole in Bayou Corne? Some say the thing could blow up like a nuclear bomb, a genuine apocalypse that’ll make Hurricane Katrina look like an afternoon shower. Why haven’t you been there with the press? Are you scared of the possible explosion or that no one will show up but sycophantic staffers with their iPhones to take photos, a press conference with no press? It’s not because the press won’t show out of fear, but that you’re no longer important enough to waste the drive.
Hey, out of our longstanding friendship, I’ll go if you go. Call me the press. I’ll write about it.
Bobby, we are a resilient people here in Louisiana. We have fought off hurricanes, levee failures, water moccasins, Yellow Fever, Reconstruction, a host of carpetbaggers and scallywags, and the Civil War, not to mention more bad governors and corrupt politicians than a country boy can shoot in the butt with a Daisy BB gun. We’ll survive your reign, especially now that your power is quickly diminishing. Thank God for the Law of Gravity.
So why not come on back to earth, Bobby? Your career is all downhill from here on out. Realizing this, however, may be the only thing that saves you from yourself. Read the late Covington novelist Dr. Walker Percy. I think his writings will offer a diagnosis for what is really at stake in your downward slide.
Reading Percy and surrounding yourself with some honest folks won’t save your career, but it could help save your soul.
Come on over to my place. I’ll brew a fresh pot of coffee. We can have a long talk. There’s life outside the bunker. Isn’t it about time you try to leave lockdown and go out into the sunshine?
It’s not nearly as bad as you think.
Your pal,
Dayne
Louisiana Voice 
…..and the truth shall set you free…..
The thing is….everytime Bobby is Stopped in his tracks outside of Louisiana the people seem to suffer some lost. I am tired of hearing about what Bobby is doing, we need to Focus on the peolpe(Legislators) that gave him the power to continue to make Louisiana the talk of the World.
Remember Hate groups on Government is on the Rise!
People we need to Stand Up and Stop this from SPREADING!
I agree CJ. BJ is a lost cause. It’s time to focus on his enablers. They should be the our focus for ouster. Start hitting the school boards as well.
Dayne you also need to add a script about the opportunistic legislators who joined the Jindal bandwagon. We know who they are and their political careers are over too.
Reblogged this on The Daily Kingfish and commented:
Enjoy this wonderful little letter from the Louisiana Voice – Bobby In the Bunker
That is really mean. I love it!
“Absolute power corupts absolutely.”
I do hope the bunker keepers let him read this. I suspect they will not, but that they have all started secretly looking around for the next coattail to grab onto.
Bobby has always had a inflated image of himself. Some of that is necessary to be successful in politics but Bobby was over the top since Mike Foster appointed him genius in residence at DHH. I was in the legislature and I don’t know of one colleague who shared Mike’s belief in Bobby and we never saw the genius. His first day as Governor started with a Presidential motorcade repleat with a motorcycle escort and a series of black suburbans to disguise in which the geuius rode–you know, just like the POTUS. He then told the audience how wonderful he was and reminded everyone that he was there to rescue Louisiana from generations of governors who lacked in leadership. You should have seen the faces of Mike, Kathleen and Buddy who I was seated near. Kathleen blew it off but Mike walked straight to his car with his wife in tow, with a lot to say to anyone who cared to listen. Nothing’s changed since then.
This article nails it! If only BJ would read it and have an epiphany. Jindal has sold his soul to people who used him as he has used the people of Louisiana. I hope he can taste the bitterness of betrayal and see that he was outplayed. But, arrogant little twerp that he is, he is probably planning his next campaign, his ministers of misinformation and propaganda at his side. His “handlers” have failed in their mission to elevate him to the position he so desires. They too have used him for money, power and the ability to bully the citizens of our state. Teepel, Rainwater, Nichols and the like get off on the power he has given them to bully others. They feed on it. How Un-American for government officials to behave as this administration has. Un-Democratic, Un-Fair, Un-AMERICAN. BJ – do you read anything except for what they spoon feed you? Are all your “friends” bought and paid for? Can you feel people starting to distance themselves because the stink of LOSER can no longer be masked? One last thing. If BJ has done so may wonderful things wouldn’t these successes speak for themselves? He and his PR machine would not have to spin, misrepresent and LIE about his actions. I hope more people wake up to the fact that Louisiana has a dictator instead of a governor. And indeed we do need to vote out his enablers who have let him run wild.
BJ is a joke!!!! And to those of you complaining after you reelected him save it.. You’re getting exactly what you voted for. He made a fool of you redneck bigots who vote against your own economic interest!!!
So it’s the fault of “redneck bigots”? I was wondering who to blame. And what kind of bigot are you? Just for the record, my husband works in a plant, drives a truck and listens to country music – oh, and he wears cowboy boots – so I guess we could classify him as a redneck sort of guy – oh, and he can bait a hook and skin a buck. It’s funny because everyone thinks he’s a Republican, which cracks us up. We are soooo not. The moral: not all “rednecks” are ignorant bigots who voted for Jindal. I know quite a few people who would sniff at being called a redneck who voted for BJ and would proudly do it again because they think he’s a Christian and that he’s upper caste, I mean class, like them. It’s all about their money and their religiosity. There is plenty of blame to go around. We all own this mess, not just the rednecks. More and more people are coming to the conclusion they made a serious mistake by putting this man in charge. It’s kind of like giving Barney Fife a bullet – big mistake.
Barney with his bullet. What an arresting image. Thanks, SR, I’ll be laughing all evening over that!
If I may be allowed to weigh in on this discussion (it is my blog, after all), I would have to agree with SR on this one, CC. The ones who supported π-yush could hardly be grouped together in a single demographic like rednecks. In fact, his core support, I believe, came more from the so-called “intellectuals” (and I use that term very loosely). He graduated from an Ivy League school (Brown), not LSU or Tech or ULL; he attended Baton Rouge Magnet, not Zachary High. His appeal has always been to New York’s Wall Street, not Range Avenue in Denham Springs. It’s not likely he will ever be remembered as a champion of the blue collar worker. All this is not to cast aspersions at Zachary High, Tech, LSU, ULL or Denham Springs (I live on Range Ave.); it is rather, an attempt to say you cannot paint all his supporters with the same broad brush.
SR, CeeCee said redneck “bigots”. There’s a difference.
The ones who own this mess are the ones who put Jindal in power. But all of us are having to suffer for the ones who did vote for him. My agency is in the midst of layoffs, and the ones who voted for him are now being targeted for layoffs. They thought their “Republican Savior” would protect them. They were wrong. When you have republican state workers on the verge of being laid off or forced into retirement complaining about Obama, and not whats going on in their own backyard with Piyush Jindal, then you have seriously flawed individuals who deserve to get what they voted for. I hope not to see them in the Welfare line someday.
I find some of the largest hypocrites, are those who vote republican and work for the government and complain about taxes. If you work for the state and receive a pay check every two weeks, tax payers are paying for it including the perks of being a state worker. If you work for the government, your right to complain about tax rates, or the fact you have to pay taxes is obsolete. And since, our survival as state workers depend upon taxes, doesn’t it make sense to vote for the people who will support state workers? You can’t have it both ways when you work for the government. If you work for the state or are retired from the state, you cannot vote for a man like Piyush Jindal and expect that he has your best interest at heart, because he doesn’t and he never will.
I hope the Dayne Sherman is right about Jindal’s political career being over. But I will believe it when I see it. When you have a man who ignores the rules to fit his agenda, he will manipulate his way into the presidency which reminds me of something Adolph Hitler once said:
“Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken.”
Dayne’s sincere and meaningful letter should be one that Gov. Jindal should really take to heart. Might be a good idea if he read it more than once. Let the words soak in in between readings. I really hope that when election time comes around, voters do remember who permitted the Governor to rip our state apart and make us be the talk of the country and the world. He’s made those legislators look like fools. Anyone who would vote them back into office are indeed as much of a fool.
Those old enough to remember lil’ Bobby’s DHH debacle when he “served” as Secretary certainly didn’t vote for him. Even then he wanted to close SELH in Mandeville and was shipped to DC to curtail damage to Gov. Foster.
Those wise enough to see through his 34% absence in Congress while “witnessing” in pulpits across the state didn’t vote for him. Those who believe the IRS should be all over the churches hosting Jindal and their 501(C)(3) status didn’t vote for him. The wwjd question has changed to “what wouldn’t Jindal do”.
The answer is nothing. There’s nothing too sleazy, unethical, immoral, undemocratic or fiscally irresponsible he would not do to pay off his owners. And the damage to the state’s necessary institutions has damaged the state forever.
Even if honest, careful, reasonable and moral politicians replace the ALEC/Jindal crowd Louisiana will be hard pressed to reverse the damage once hospitals, prisons, schools and other institutions are sold off to corporations for pennies on the dollar.
Recall is the solution for all Jindal’s bribed minions. Interested in recalling the bribed politician in your district? Contact us at Louisiana Political Action Committee, C/O Charles Bowman, PO 86, Elmer, LA 71424.
Comments are right on!
I first met Bobby a few weeks after he took over DHH, while serving in my capacity as an official for a Parish entity. What I observed then, has been confirmed over the intervening years – Bobby Jindal is a consummate bully. Not the dim-witted neanderthal who stole lunch money from the little dork with the coke-bottled glasses, but something worse. Bobby WAS the dork. But unlike most of us who moved on from those awkward days to become normal people, something in Bobby snapped.
He has spent his entire life selling his soul to obtain power, always with one thing in mind – revenge. There is no morality, no conscience, no normal sense of what is “Right”; there is only the cold, self-absorbed machine. Jindal, as we see him today, is what he allowed himself become – a pitiful creature, tortured by his own obsession. He can best be described as was Heath Ledger’s Joker in the Dark Knight: “…some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men – just want to watch the world burn.”
I’ve been saying all along that the “demon” jumped into BJ at that amateur exorcism we wrote so eloquently about.
Great article and great posts in response. It is encouraging that people are not only waking up, but speaking up, including this guy in the ADVOCATE this morning:
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/3661429-123/letters-jindal-doesnt-care-about
Everything Rolfe McCollister touches turns to crap. He’s the #1 reason Baton Rouge is like Reno: full of promise and potential, but moribund and mediocre.
Lets hope Governor Piyush gets a cabinet post if Mitt Romney wins. Then hoping again, Jay Dardenne will clean house and send Piyush cronnies packing!