I found my friend Harley Purvis in his usual spot at John Wayne Culpepper’s Lip-Smackin’ Bar-B-Que House and Used Lightbulb Emporium in Watson, Louisiana—in the booth in the back in the corner in the dark. Also as usual, his mood matched the lighting. Not much brightens Harley’s moods these days.
Without bothering to look up as I slid into the booth opposite him, he said, “Idiots. We’re overrun with idiots.” It reminded me of Strother Martin’s line in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the outlaws fled to Bolivia to escort the payroll to the mines run by Martin. On the way down the mountain, Butch and Sundance were speculating where the banditos might be lying in ambush. “You idiots,” Martin scolded them, pointing out that they weren’t likely to be robbed going down the mountain when they had no money but on the trip back up when they would be transporting the payroll. “Imbeciles, I’m working with imbeciles,” he said as he spat a tobacco juice stream to the ground.
Without waiting for me to ask, Harley continued. “I remember when they first opened the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts up in Natchitoches. It was 1983 and it’s been the one shining star for Louisiana, something the state can be really proud of. Now they want to name it after a politician.”
The school, I already knew, was pushed hard by State Rep. Jimmy Long of Natchitoches, who passed away last August. I also knew that State Sen. Francis Thompson was pushing his SENATE BILL 1 which would rename the school as the Jimmy D. Long, Sr. Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts.
“That school has a great reputation and now they want to tack a politician’s name on it,” Harley grumped. “Is that gonna make the school better? I know Jimmy Long was the inspiration behind the creation of the school but there were others involved, too. There was State Sen. Don Kelly, Gov. Dave Treen and the Dean of the College of Education at Northwestern…what was his name?”
“Robert Alost,” I said. “His son Stan was a photographer for the Baton Rouge Advocate.”
“Yeah, whatever. Where they gonna put their names? Look what they did at Louisiana Tech, naming that Wyly Tower after Sam and Charles Wyly. Didn’t them boys get into a little trouble with the SEC and the IRS? Sam and the estate of his brother Charles owe the IRS something a little north of $3 billion, last I heard.
“Hell, why stop with that school? James Davison’s done a lot for Tech. Let’s rename it James Davison University. How about James A. Noe University in place of the University of Louisiana Monroe? Or Eddie Robinson University at Grambling?
“James Carville’s not even in the ball park wanting to erect a puny statute in honor of LSU’s first president. I say we just rename it the Gen. William T. Sherman University and get it over with.”
“What about McNeese, Nicholls State, ULL, Southeastern, UNO and Southern?” I asked.
He shot a withering look at me. “Dumbass, Nicholls and McNeese is already named after somebody. I ain’t give the others much thought yet, but I can come up with somebody appropriate if I tried. Next thing you know, somebody’s gonna have the bright idea to name Poverty Point the Francis Thompson Poverty Point State Park. An’ I bet Francis would like that. He’d probably lobby for it.”
Just as abruptly, he turned his wrath onto Congressman CLAY HIGGINS, who over the weekend, publicly advocated killing all “radicalized” Islamics. “This guy (Higgins) is a former reserve deputy city marshal and a former reserve deputy sheriff,” for God’s sake,” Harley said.
Shoving a folded newspaper at me, he pointed to the ARTICLE. I had already read the story in which Higgins advocated the killing of anyone even suspected of having links to terrorism. “The biggest problem with his plan, as I see it,” said Harley, “is that nowhere in this story does he spell out how such a suspect is to be determined. Looks to me like this former bastion of law and order is trying to set himself up to be accuser, judge and jury with no provision for due process. Does that sound like America to you?
“You know who he sounds like to me?
“Joe McCarthy,” he said, not waiting for me to reply. “He’s one of those clowns who, back in the 19th Century, would’ve sat up there in Washington and endorsed the wholesale slaughter of the American Indians. He would’ve been the first in line to put all Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII. I have a friend who calls that kind of fool an ass clown. I ain’t sure what it means, but I like the sound of it.
“Don’t get me wrong, we have to do something about these terrorist attacks. I wish I was smart enough I had the answer, but I don’t. But neither does Higgins—not with his kind of mindless B.S.
“I wonder how he feels about the radical wingnuts at Westboro Baptist Church?”
Harley noted that Higgins had once served as public information officer for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. “He made all those stupid macho PR SPOTS for television,” he said. “Called himself ‘America’s toughest cop.’ One of ‘em even went viral and was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Hell, he was a PR flack who called himself the Cajun John Wayne. Cajun Barney Fife is more like it. It got so embarrassing for the sheriff’s office, he had to resign only to be sworn in the next month as a deputy city marshal in Lafayette. Now the damn fool’s a congressman.”
“The man was sued during his campaign by his ex-wife who said he was in arrears on his child support to the tune of about 140 grand. Know what he said in response to that? If he got elected, he could afford to pay. Now that he’s in, he still hasn’t paid and his lawyer says it’s because he’s ‘busy.’ He’s busy, all right. Busy making a damn fool of himself and a laughingstock of the state.”
Harley took a long drink of coffee and set his cup down in disgust.
“Idiots. We’re overrun with idiots.”
The modifications to the name and brand of LSMSA do not make it a winner.
Just what Louisiana needed on the national stage – a congressman spouting hate and ignorance. Higgins makes us all look stupid (again) for electing such an ignoramus.
As for our local politicians’ ridiculous antics – they manage to name things after their own, but can’t seem to get their jobs done. In a fiscal session they can’t seem to get our fiscal house in order so a(nother) special session is needed to get the job done. We taxpayers get to spend more money the state does not have to let our legislature attempt to do the work they are not doing when they are supposed to do it. Why are we paying for their fecklessness? Does anyone really think the leges will get done in a special session what they can’t or won’t during a regular fiscal session?
We the People need to wake up and send the majority of them back home for good, with a few notable exceptions. Walt Leger, JP Morrell, Helena Moreno – y’all stay. The rest ought to pack up and get the hell out. They are worse than useless.
I think that you should sell tickets to his rants. I’d pay to sit in the next booth and just listen.
Tom – here’s another contender for the title of Louisiana congressional delegation terminal stupidity champion:
House Overwhelmingly Supports Bill Subjecting Teen Sexters to 15 Years in Federal Prison
The bill was requested by the Department of Justice after federal prosecutors bungled a child exploitation case.
RepMikeJohnson/TwitterTeens who text each other explicit images could be subject to 15 years in federal prison under a new bill that just passed the House of Representatives. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, has called the measure “deadly and counterproductive.”
“While the bill is well intended, it is overbroad in scope and will punish the very people it indicates it is designed to protect: our children,” Lee said during a House floor debate over the bill. The bill would also raise “new constitutional concerns” and “exacerbate overwhelming concerns with the unfair and unjust mandatory minimum sentencing that contributes to the overcriminalization of juveniles and mass incarceration generally.”
Introduced by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) in March, the “Protecting Against Child Exploitation Act of 2017” passed the House by an overwhelming majority last week. Only two Republicans—Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Thomas Massie of Kentucky—voted against the bill, along with 53 Democrats.
Most of the opposition centered on the bill’s effective expansion of mandatory-minimum prison sentences. One vocal critic was Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Virginia), who called the legislation “particularly appalling” because it would “apply to people who I think we should all agree should not be subject” to long mandatory minimums. “Under this law, teenagers who engage in consensual conduct and send photos of a sexual nature to their friends or even to each other may be prosecuted and the judge must sentence them to at least 15 years in prison,” said Scott on the House floor.
But Johnson, a freshman congressman (and vocal Trump supporter), dismissed opponents’ concern that the measure would be used in ways he didn’t intend it to be used. “In Scripture, Romans 13 refers to the governing authorities as ‘God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer,'” he said in response to their floor concerns. “I, for one, believe we have a moral obligation, as any just government should, to defend the defenseless.”