Louisiana Voice

First of all, Robert Mann doesn’t need me to defend him. His accomplishments speak for themselves, The Hayride’s cheesy, amateurish PHOTOSHOPPING efforts notwithstanding (that’s about the sloppiest job I’ve ever seen of pasting someone’s head onto a photo of a homeless person, by the way).

The fact that The Hayride and I are poles apart politically is of no consequence; it’s their right to take their position just as it’s my right to take mine.

But for a publication that depends on the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment to personally attack a writer over his First Amendment rights is beyond the pale. To imply that he possesses no qualifications as a journalist is disingenuous, at best.

The Hayride editors and our POS attorney general would be wise to recall a quote attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

To attempt to re-write history by saying Mann “invented the narrative” that the Hurricane Katrina response was the fault of the federal government is flat-out incorrect. Who can forget, “heckuva job, Brownie”?

But Mann isn’t a journalist, according to The Hayride. To that, I would refer The Hayride editors to a few of Mann’s excellent books: A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (probably the preeminent examination of how the US became involved in that debacle); The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell and the Struggle for Civil Rights; or Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad that Changed American Politics. That, folks, is journalism at its finest. And to The Hayride’s contention that Mann is not a journalist, I would respectfully ask how many books has Scott McKay, aka MacAoidh, written?

But I digress. This whole thing has its roots in Mann’s description of one of POS Attorney General Jeff Landry’s flunkies as a flunky when the flunky was dispatched to a meeting of the LSU Faculty Senate meeting to read a letter attacking covid vaccines, a move that Mann suggested was in contrast to Landry’s staking out a position of pro-life.

The Hayride, following Landry’s cue, went BERSERK over Mann’s tweet.

When I say they took their cue from POS Landry, it was no exaggeration. Landry immediately DEMANDED that Mann be drawn and quartered by the LSU administration for daring to criticize our idiot AG. And I don’t use the term idiot lightly.

Fortunately, LSU President WILLIAM TATE immediately issued a firm commitment to protecting Mann’s First Amendment rights, POS Landry’s bruised feelings be damned.

Lest we forget, Landry has abused his office since the day he was sworn in. Following the first primary in 2015, Landry trailed incumbent AG Buddy Caldwell by two percentage points. Geradine Broussard Baloney was third at 18 percent. Baloney endorsed Landry in the November runoff and after Landry was elected, Baloney’s daughter, Quendi Baloney, WAS HIRED for the AG’s Fraud Section, which was somehow appropriate, given that in 1999, she had been charged with 11 felony counts of credit card fraud and theft, eventually pleading guilty to three counts and receiving a suspended prison sentence.

Landry was involved up to his neck in a $17 MILLION SCAM to hire Mexican welders and pipe fitters under H-2B visa rules through three companies owned by him and his brother, Ben Landry. Nice chops for an AG who opposes immigration.

He tried, unsuccessfully, it turned out, to force Gov. John Bel Edwards to appoint Carolyn Prator, a conservative operative and wife of Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator, to the Red River Waterway Commission. (Sheriff Prator, you may recall, opposed Edwards’ early release of some prisoners because it took away his department’s car washers.)

Landry, along with State Treasurer John Schroder, ramrodded a provision through the STATE BOND COMMISSION that barred the state from doing business with any financial institution that discriminates against a firearm entity or firearm trade association – a silly, asinine, knee-jerk move that could conceivably cost the state millions of dollars. That, my friends, is the very definition of putting politics ahead of the interests of the citizens of Louisiana.

Landry put supporter, contributor and oilman Shane Guidry on the AG’s payroll as an investigator of some sort and later had AG AGENTS combing the state and neighboring Mississippi on Guidry’s behalf, looking for the biological mother of Guidry’s adopted daughter in order to stop her from communicating with the daughter – even though no crime had been committed.

Landry even managed to ignore his own stipulation that any employee of the AG’s office who runs for public office must resign when he gave his blessings for Assistant AG LIZ MURRILL to announce that she would run for attorney general should her boss run, as expected, for governor in 2023 – and keep her job.

With all that baggage, you’d think that Landry had enough to worry about without getting his drawers in a wad over Mann’s observations, but I guess not.

This, folks, is your attorney general, elected by the good citizens of Louisiana. And we wonder how we wind up at the bottom of all the good lists and at the top of all the bad ones.

In two simple words, it’s leadership and integrity – or the lack thereof. So long as we continue electing people like Landry, and about 95 percent of the legislature, we are going to continue to wallow in the sticky mud of political corruption, ineptitude and indifference.

And we have only ourselves – not Bob Mann or The Hayride – to blame.