You Can Laugh About It

…until it hits you in the wallet. THEN it’s not so funny anymore.

The impact of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s controversial comments on Martin Luther King Day landed squarely on the shoulders of local tourism officials Wednesday, one day after the mayor and his staff launched a major damage control effort to temper the firestorm.
As pundits and talk-show hosts parodied Nagin coast to coast, tourism officials tried to soothe angry, disillusioned clients while political observers weighed the potential impact in Washington.
…”A lot of people in Washington see Louisiana as a banana republic and New Orleans as a kind of zoo,” Cook said. “The mayor’s not helping the city when he says things like that. It just reinforces that negative stereotype and really does hurt your cause.”

Just in Washington? Actually, I’d say that’s pretty much the perception all over the country.

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