Cover Story

Couillon

It sounds like the set-up to a bad B movie, but it really happened at Negreet High School in Many, where a portrait of Jesus once hung in the school lobby and Bible verses hung on the walls — until the ACLU of Louisiana filed suit on behalf of the...

JANUARY

A Buddhist boy attends a Sabine Parish public high school. He gets a science test from his teacher with such questions as “Isn’t it amazing what _________ has made!!!!!!” The correct answer is “God” of course. But the Buddhist fails to supply the right(eous) answer and is belittled in front of classmates.

It sounds like the set-up to a bad B movie, but it really happened at Negreet High School in Many, where a portrait of Jesus once hung in the school lobby and Bible verses hung on the walls — until the ACLU of Louisiana filed suit on behalf of the boy, and the public school system agreed to actually conduct itself as a public school system, meaning the little priss can be bullied for wearing skinny jeans but not for being Buddhist.

U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy will not stand for oil portraits. Nor will he sit for them.

In an effort to burnish an otherwise undistinguished tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, Cassidy sponsors the EGO Act, AKA the Eliminating Government-Funded Oil-Paintings Act. Not only does it scream at the Federal Department of Acronyms, “Boys, y’all better step up your game,” it also has the Louisiana State Office for the Prevention of Hyphen Abuse on alert. Most important, however, it addresses a fundamental crisis of entitlement among those within the Beltway: elected officials and cabinet-level bureaucrats sitting for taxpayerfunded portraits. Not in latex, watercolor, charcoal or graphite pencil. In oil!

FEBRUARY

Pity poor Don Briggs. The head of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association felt a stroke a-comin’ after being exposed as a high-chutzpah, low-information fraud during a deposition about LOGA’s suit against Attorney General Buddy Caldwell over that levee board lawsuit against Big Oil.

Two tenets have long been central to the Briggs Doctrine: “greedy trial lawyers” are behind “frivolous” lawsuits against oil companies, and Louisiana’s litigious climate is driving those companies out of the state or preventing them from doing business here in the first place.

But under questioning from attorneys, Briggs’ utterly calculated and craven hyperbole blew up like the Deepwater Horizon. The oil industry shill admitted he didn’t have a shred of evidence that Louisiana’s legal climate affected jobs in oil and gas. He even admitted he hadn’t even read the levee board’s suit against the oil companies. The humiliation of acknowledging the emperor’s nudity reportedly caused Briggs’ blood pressure to spike, forcing him at doctor’s orders to skip court hearings in Baton Rouge a week later.

MARCH

State Sen. Barrow Peacock, R-Fancy Name, withdraws a bill that would have overridden local ordinances prohibiting public and private employers from discriminating against lesbian, gay and transgender people. New Orleans and Shreveport have such laws on their books. Lafayette will have one some day, too, Joey Durel!

APRIL

Soon-to-be-former District Attorney Mike Harson apologizes for the pay-for-plea bribery scandal that turned his office upside down and led to federal guilty pleas and impending prison terms for a handful of office staffers including an assistant district attorney. Two years after the scandal.

U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister, R-French Kiss, asks for constituents’ forgiveness after surveillance video is released showing the married congressman kissing a married female staff member who is not his wife. McAllister, a surprise long-shot winner in a special election six months earlier, had campaigned on a family-values platform. He will later be defeated in the November election when voters in the district tell him to “kiss off!”

Three teens whose first names are not Conner, Tanner or Logan are arrested in Eunice, the hamlet in St. Landry Parish popularly known as “Belt City U.S.A.,” after officers receive a complaint about the scofflaws perambulating about Vine Street in flagrant violation of the city’s dress code — specifically Eunice’s prohibition on sagging pants.

The suspects share three common features: dark skin, exotic, non- Caucasian first names — Gujuan, Shaiheem and Devacques — and pants so saggy as to reveal the contours of their boxer-shorts-covered buttocks.

Following the cuffing and stuffing of the Pendulous Pants Posse, the Eunice Ladies’ Modesty League was able to resume its meeting — this despite the sergeant-at-arms feeling a bit blushy and light-headed.

MAY

UL Lafayette, the university in the heart of Frenchspeaking Louisiana, obtains a registered trademark for “Geaux Cajuns,” forever enshrining the sports rallying cry in the Lexicon of Bad French. (En français, “Geaux” is pronounced with a soft “J” sound, as in the name Domengeaux; technically the term should be “Gaux Cajuns.” But LSU uses Geaux so we should, too, right?)

JUNE

State Sen. Page Cortez of Lafayette fi les a righteous bill in the legislative session that would stop charter schools from getting dedicated tax revenues from the Lafayette Parish School System.

The bill, however, is fraught with bad luck, including a malfunctioning sound system in the Senate chamber when it comes up for discussion.

Cortez later withdraws Senate Bill 666, telling a daily newspaper, “I think I would have been better off asking for a substitute bill just to get a different number.”

Two words: Elbert Guillory. Chicken Boxing

Six words and an article: Lenar Whitney. “GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX”

AUGUST

When Moses descended the mount with the Constitution, Ray Green was there.

Kidding, but the council gadfly and patriotic curmudgeon, whom we like in a crazy-uncleat-Thanksgiving sort of way, is the driving force behind a resolution up for consideration by the City-Parish Council. The Common Sense Project 3’s aim is to encourage the Legislature to require candidates for public office to pass a test demonstrating basic knowledge of the state and federal constitutions.

No big problem with that, except for Green’s proposed sample test, which includes questions like “The US Constitution is in direct conflict with the Holy Bible. Why?” and “The Federal Reserve is a true government agency or organization. Why?” In other words, loaded and leading questions that wreak of used tea bags and Ayn Rand’s saggy bosom.

SEPTEMBER

Theind.com breaks the news that District Attorney Mike Harson is so upset in 2012 by the pay-for-plea bribery scandal and ensuing retirement of his top prosecutor, Keith Stutes — who will later end Harson’s 20-year career as DA in the Nov. 4 election — that he gives himself a raise. A $12,000 bump in salary ($14,000 with benefits) to be exact. And he basically concealed the raise in fine print when he sent the request, which included raises for other employees, to the council.

OCTOBER

Scott Police Chief Chad Leger, scion of a Cajun family that no doubt once spoke only French, complains in a Facebook rant about Spanish creeping into everything — even onto a form he had to fi ll out for a flu shot asking whether he is Hispanic: “This is the United States of America and if you don’t like the rules of our land, either learn and follow them, which would include learning to speak English or move back to the country you came from,” Leger writes.

We imagine a persnickety schoolmarm telling Leger’s great grandmother the exact same thing in 1930.

NOVEMBER

We so wish the runoff for the District 1 seat on the Lafayette Parish School Board were before publication of this issue so we could revel in voters utterly “refudiating” idiotic bigot “Coach” Don Gagnard at the polls.

The former high school coach with a history of bullying and harassing women didn’t realize that if you don’t set your Facebook privacy settings accordingly, social media is public media. The result: a stream of inane, racist, homophobic rants for all the world (and voters) to see.

A sample: “I am not only racist but I hate faggots, bums, illegal aliens, Veterans mistreatment and most of all : OUR HITLER PRESIDENT WHICH IS TRYING TO RUIN THIS COUNTRY PURPOSEFULLY........................I HATE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE COMMUNIST REGIME SO CALLED OUR AMERICAN CULTURE.. OBAMA, GO AWAY AND BRING YOUR URGANGUTAN WITH YOU” A day after theind.com broke the story on Gagnard’s low threshold for understanding the world he lives in and other local media picking up the story, he disabled his Facebook account.