Too Much Stress for Nagin?

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has spent a lot of time in the news over the past several months. Ever since Hurricane Katrina first threatened the city, Nagin has been an almost permanent fixture in the news. All the months of blame laying and fault shifting may have finally taken their toll on him, however.

On Monday, Martin Luther King Day, Mayor Nagin proclaimed that “God is mad at America” and that was the reason for all of the hurricanes and other major storms that have plagued our country recently. He went on to say that God does not approve of us being in Iraq and that God is mad at black America. Nagin vowed to rebuild New Orleans the way God wanted it: “a majority African-American city.” “You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans.” After explaining the things that God had told him, Nagin went on to discuss an imaginary conversation he recently had with the late Dr. King.

It’s fairly evident that the stress has finally taken its toll on the Mayor and he has begun hallucinating. The odds are that if God really was mad at America, he could come up with a better course of action to show his displeasure than flooding New Orleans with a hurricane. He also would surely have chosen someone other than Ray Nagin to be his voice on Earth. Even if I’m wrong and God is speaking to Mayor Nagin, it would seem to me that rebuilding New Orleans would upset God even more. After all, Mayor Nagin said that God is mad and wanted New Orleans destroyed, now he wants to re-build it like it was before. Seems a little risky to me. I don’t know who or what is speaking to him these days, but I do believe that Mayor Nagin may want to stop listening to the voices before its too late.

Of course another alternative is that this is nothing more than a publicity stunt on Nagin’s part. Perhaps he feels that the national spotlight has begun to shine elsewhere so he’s doing anything and everything possible to keep the attention on him and his city. They say that any publicity is good publicity, but when your Mayor starts telling the world about how God confides in him and how he holds conversations with deceased civil rights leaders, it’s time to be concerned. If anyone knows a good psychologist for Ray, you can let him know via the City of New Orleans website.