Louisiana: Dialogue Des Morts
by Christian Champagne

Ted Koppel, interlocutor: Satirist Chris Champagne offers up a little dialogue, in the classical sense.

[Nightline music]
TED KOPPEL: Hello I’m Ted Koppel. I’m a big important media icon and since I don’t know the first thing about New Orleans I’m here to moderate a round table discussion. “Katrina: More BS than you can shake a stick at.” Let’s start our discussion with Michael Brown, former head of FEMA. What went wrong Mr. Brown?
BROWN: Ted, there is no Nordstrom’s in New Orleans, ask Mike Ditka - and that’s just for starters. My hair was always combed as if I were on a Hollywood sound stage. Not one Arabian horse died in Katrina. I was paid well. I had good food. Plenty of water. Nice place to sleep. Still do by the way. There is no problem. These people, the government in Louisiana are dysfunctional.
KOPPEL: Governor? How do you respond?

You're an outsider, Ted, so you might not understand this.

AARON BROUSSARD: Ted, if I may, I think a little faster than the Governor. So let me interject while she assembles a response. I’d like to point out that you don’t have to have a levee fail in order to flood peoples’ homes. We did it in Jefferson Parish, when I turned into Chicken Little.
KOPPEL: America wants to know, Mr. Broussard. What in the hell were you thinking?
BROUSSARD: You’re an outsider Ted, so you might not understand this, but when the hurricane was approaching I had members of an elite team of fais-do-do contributors kidnap Nash Roberts and deliver him to a crack team of sushi chefs assembled by Emeril and they made sushi out of Nash, and I ate it. I at that moment became the smartest human in history when it came to hurricanes. I hope that explains it.
KOPPEL: Do you have any regrets?
BROUSSARD: No, Ted. I’d do it all again. I would go out of my way to save 12 men who didn’t need saving and flood hundreds of homes any day.
KOPPEL: Thank you for that illumination President Broussard, but please wait your turn. Governor?

Before I state my case I would like to form an ad hoc committee.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO: Thank [pause] you [pause] for [pause] coming [pause] here [pause] to [pause] Louisiana. Would you like a cookie?
BOTTCHER: [in an audible whisper] Not so slow. Not THAT deliberate, Governor.
KOPPEL: No prompting from the wings, Ms. Bottcher.
BLANCO: Before I [pause] state my case I [pause] would like to form an ad hoc [pause] committee. By a show of [pause] hands how many of [pause] you think that I [pause] should go to the bathroom and how [pause] many think I should [pause] hold it in?
KOPPEL All in favor? Unanimous. Go ahead.
[BLANCO leaves]
[Ten minutes later]
BLANCO: I have [pause] a timeline that will actually [pause] reinforce how out of touch and inept my actions [pause] were during the crisis. The levees [pause] broke sometime between when I was sitting around [pause] waiting for the White House to return my [pause] call or do something, and Easter. I and [pause] my staff are proud of the resurrection symbolism. We went to college. [pause] Education degrees. [pause] Really.
KOPPEL: What does that have to do with the levees breaking?
BROWN: Mr. Koppel, could you please ask Mr. Broussard and Mr. Nagin to switch chairs, their heads are blinding me.
KOPPEL: Gentlemen?
[Nagin and Broussard change seats]
Governor. What action did you take once the levees broke?
BLANCO: I did [pause] all I could. When New Orleans started [pause] to flood I sent someone down there to throw [pause] a bunch of bay leaves into the water.
BROWN: Ted this was an unprecedented situation, no one could have predicted this. Michael Chertoff the head of Homeland Security said it all when he said that nature just didn’t cooperate.
KOPPEL: Mr. Brown, in Hurricane Pam exercises, the simulated storm exercises run by the government, at the cost of millions, this scenario was exactly what was predicted?
BROWN: Oh ? Yeah. I guess you’re right. But Hurricane Pam was catered. Katrina not so much.
KOPPEL As far as Mr. Chertoffs comments. What? If you would have lent the storm $5 it might have gone easy on you?
WILLIAM JEFFERSON: Maybe if we had bribed it.
KOPPEL: Mr. Brown it has been reported that as early as 2004 you were told in an 11-page report that you, meaning FEMA, was not prepared for a major disaster. Did you read it?
BROWN: Ah… maybe, if it was written on a menu at a fancy restaurant?
KOPPEL: Or inside a Nordstrom’s catalog?
BROWN: Right.
KOPPEL: We have attempted to get President Bush to comment on the federal government’s response to the Katrina disaster, but he would only agree to answer a few questions on videotape. Roll that tape please.
[Image of Bush on a split screen]
KOPPEL: Mr President, many have questioned why you as the leader of this country did not go to New Orleans in person, on the ground, to give a signal or moral support to an American city in the throes of a huge disaster.
BUSH: That is a fair question Ted. Karl Rove advised me that if I were to show my face at the Convention Center that I would have been torn apart like a stewed chicken.
[video disappears]
KOPPEL: Senators Landrieu and Vitter, let me bring you in here. What is it you’d like our audience to know?
LANDRIEU AND VITTER : [Simultaneously in harmony reminiscent of the Beach Boys or the Mills Brothers] Whatever the other senator says I disagree. I agree with that.
KOPPEL: That’s pretty clear. Mayor Nagin, you implored your citizens to leave the city. Now you are imploring them to come back. What gives?
NAGIN: You put your left foot out - you put your right foot in - you shake it all around - and you do it all again.
KOPPEL: The Hokey Pokey?
NAGIN: That’s what its all about.
KOPPEL: Mr. Mayor with all due respect you were woefully unprepared for this storm, weren’t you?
NAGIN: It was our worst fear. It was always a possibility that this would happen. The levees fail and all hell breaks loose. But there was one thing that we were not prepared for.
KOPPEL And, that was?
NAGIN: That the levees were built like crap!
KOPPEL: Some think that the levees failed because of a conspiracy, that someone blew them up.

They were either built by or blown up by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.

NAGIN: Yes, they were either built by or blown up by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
[A roaring “Yes!”]
KOPPEL: What was that?
NAGIN: All the elected officials in Louisiana who want an alibi.

KOPPEL: Let’s bring in Mr. Richard Rolvaag, an engineer from the University of Minnesota. You’ve looked at these levees. What did you find?
JOHN BREAUX: Ted, Senator Breaux. Can I jump in here? I’m representing a stellar roster of former La elected officials: Billy Tauzin, Bob Livingston, J. Bennet Johnston, Lindy Boggs…..
KOPPEL: With more than all due respect, senator, considering that you were all actually in a position to protect your state from this eventuality and the levees did in fact break destroying the city, why don’t you just keep your mouth shut. Please continue Mr. Rolvaag.
ROLVAAG: These levees were built so inadequately that I’m just surprised that the entire Gulf of Mexico is not lapping at the border with Canada and inundating the entire Louisiana Purchase.
NAGIN: Ted, the citizens have ridiculed me for trying to advocate a gambling district in New Orleans. What do you call building a category 3 levee when you could have built a category 5?
KOPPEL: Good point. So, the Corps of Engineers built a flawed levee system?
ROLVAAG: Are you familiar with the parlor game Clue?
KOPPEL: Yes, Colonel Green in the library, with a rope.
ROLVAAG: Right. This is more like Louisiana Politicians in the treasury with the Corps of Engineers.
KOPPEL: Mr. French of the Levee Board. How about it?
LEVEE BOARD MAN: We inspect dese levees alla da time.
KOPPEL: Can you give me an example of how you inspect the levees?
LEVEE BOARD MAN: Ma cousins and uncle fa instance. We axe da guys dat cut da grass. Lemme show ya. “Hey. Milton wit da lawn mower ting. Whass up wit da levee? “ and den he says “Looks awright ta me.” Teknikal stuff like dat. Den we have somebody like Harry Lee, acting as a private citizen ya unnerstan, stan up onna ladder we bought from aunt Alice, at da going rate of a Pentagon terlet seat, and we have him jump onna levee. Den we eyeball da sucka. Den we go have a $900 dollar lunch on da public coin. Malfeasance on an empty stummock is against Biblical prophesy.
KOPPEL: That’s it?
LEVEE BOARD MAN: Ya don’t want to look too hawd at da levee, bra. Its a fragile structure.

The Ghost of Administrations Past.

[a disembodied voice harkens]
MORIAL: Ted?! Ted?!
KOPPEL: Who is that?
NAGIN: That’s the ghost of administrations past.
MORIAL: Marc Morial. Former mayor of New Orleans. I’m on the speakerphone.
KOPPEL: Welcome Mr. Mayor. Would you like to put in your two cents?
MORIAL: Now Ted you must know that my honorariums and fees are higher than that. Especially in New Orleans.
SAM da DOGRIS: May I axe da mayor a question. Ted?
KOPPEL: Sure this is Sam the Dogris, a New Orleans everyman.
DOGRIS: How come you never set foot in New Orleans anymore?
MORIAL: I’m glad you asked me that. I have tried mightily to return to my beloved home over and over again. However I have a severe inner ear infection and each time I try to return I end up at a luncheon in Georgetown or shopping at Tiffany’s in New York or eating at a fine restraint in Chicago’s Miracle Mile against my will.
NAGIN: Hey, Marc. This is Ray Nagin, I got a joke for you.
MORIAL: [small groaning sound] Yeah?
NAGIN: Knock Knock.
MORIAL: Who’s there?
NAGIN: Jim Letten.
MORIAL: Jim Letten who?
NAGIN: Jim Letten the chips fall where they may.
MORIAL: Ha ha.
KOPPEL: Congressman Bill Jefferson, what do you think are some of the great challenges facing New Orleans as it bounces back?
JEFFERSON: As a lifelong public servant and the head of a budding Kenndyesque Louisiana political clan, I do see the levee failure and destruction as a huge opportunity. And my biggest worry is that when the elected leaders of this greater community white and black, democrat and republican, see the gargantuan amounts of money pumped in here they are going to faint at the unbelievable prospect of getting their mitts on it.
KOPPEL: But isn’t that speaking to the worst fears of the American public? Business as usual. The so called Louisiana way. Don’t you, the political class, get it?
JEFFERSON: I went to Harvard, Ted. I get it. And many more people also get it and intend to try their damnedest to get it. Get it?
{Let the record show that at this point Congressman Bobby Jindal was asked a series of questions and his responses were so rapid that they could not be understood by the human ear and are to appear on our website after they are translated by dolphins.}
KOPPEL: Governor Blanco, many have questioned your leadership. You announced a few weeks back a plan you had to train people to help residents of the ravaged areas to cut through all the red tape and expedite all the agencies and grant money that was coming in via government and private donations.
BLANCO: That’s [pause] right [pause] Ted.
KOPPEL: That seems like a good idea, but at the press conference announcing the plan you stated that you were talking about 500 people to be trained at a cost of $1 billion dollars. That’s two million dollars to train each person.
BLANCO: And?
KOPPEL: That’s absurd. You’re telling the whole world that you cannot even handle rudimentary math.
BLANCO: Be that as [pause] it may. I am still the Governor of [pause] Louisiana and I know how to [pause] bake a pie from scratch. And, I might point out, [pause] that no matter what, [pause] I’m still more popular than Tom Benson.
KOPPEL: The last word will go to the Dogris. What do you think Mr Dogris when you hear that America may not want to rebuild New Orleans.?
DOGRIS: Off da top a ma head I think its vile. But I mean I’m a dogris. I got me an alternative plan. If dey don’t rebuild this unique remarkable urban treasure what we need ta do is get in our caws and trucks and have a thousands a miles Mawdi Graw parade and bring our baseball bats, sledge hammers, maybe some molotov cocktails and go to Georgetown and bust dat some bitch ta da ground brick by brick until its dust. Den go ta Chicago and burn dat big boy down. Dats ma contribution ta da genteel discourse.
KOPPEL: I understand that your wife has an opinion on the often asked question, “Who is to blame?’
MRS. DOGRIS: Yeah. The way I figure it, if you have voted in a Louisiana election in the last 50 years, you may be an accessory to a crime.
KOPPEL: There you have it. I’m Ted Koppel and I really don’t know where the hell I am. Goodnight.

Christian Champagne is a satirist and comedian. He is appearing live at the Fairgrinds Coffee House on Saturday, Oct. 14 & 21 @ 8 p.m.
Call 888-898-9828 for more information.