My jaw dropped when I saw an announcement that Carlos Mencia had been invited to ride as an honored guest in the Krewe of Orpheus, one of the bigger and more spectacular Mardi Gras Parades of the season. You see a mere month or so after Katrina devastated our city he came out with a six or seven minute long routine about the disaster, some of his most remembered jokes included the following:

• “Why are we rebuilding New Orleans? Whose idea was this, Aquaman?”
• “Hurricane Katrina was caused by political correctness. I said it!”
• “I’m glad Hurricane Katrina happened. It taught us an important lesson: black people can’t swim.”

As you may imagine our vibrant online communities immediately started to buzz. Now let’s be clear here, everything in the world gets joked about. Taste is a personal issue. However, if you are going to make statements like those a few mere weeks after the disaster, at a time when most of the population are displaced, is akin to cracking 9-11 jokes on 10-01. If you do intend to make jokes like this you should keep in mind that everything is archived and people are getting better at data mining on a daily basis.When people die in great numbers it is rarely time for derogatory humor.

While I was busy in an online discussion of the subject with other local bloggers the New Orleans LiveJournal Commnity exploded with commentary. One member of Orpheus made a comment on the subject and the comments are revealing. Please eep in mind that many of the links here are Not Safe For Work due to the profanity that is often found behind them, its a very pasionate subject for New Orleanians.  [Mencia Again - NOLA LJ] Emails were flying all over the place and Twitter was humming like a Tuvan Throat Singer.

Noted local author Poppy Z. Brite and her husband, Chef Chris DeBarr not only emailed the Krewe of Orpheus but also posted the letter on her rather high traffic blog. Here is a small sample posted under the NSFW title of  Hail Orpheus, F*ck Mencia:

By granting this hateful and bigoted person the honor of riding as a celebrity guest in your parade, you and the membership of Orpheus tacitly condone these remarks. Whether Mencia has apologized for them or not (we are not aware that he has), he does not deserve to be welcomed to our city, let alone honored at our most important celebration. If Orpheus cares about New Orleans, Mr. Mencia’s invitation will be revoked. If it is not revoked, we suggest you invest in some extra protection for Mencia’s float. We personally would not take part in violence against parade riders, but please be aware that a number of paradegoers are already targeting Mencia for verbal abuse and more. I cannot imagine that you want to see Orpheus’ history marred by an ugly incident that could have been avoided by selecting a more appropriate celebrity rider.

All in all the Internet capable portion of our opulation seemed to be extremely upset, to be honest I was. Mencias Katrina “humor” was one of the first things that came on when our cable service was returned right after returning from six weeks of exile while the city was under water.

The beauty of this, and an example f the power of the Internet, is that within 24 hours of hearing about this Orpheus un-invited Carlos and asked Joan Rivers instead. The digital ripple effect was prnounced enough for NOLA.com to write a column about the virtual backlash. I highly advise this article as it included excerpts from several of the local blogs (admitedly colleuages of mine). [Web Denizens Steamed Over Mencia's Orpheus Invite - NOLA.com]

The NOLA.com piece is a bit of a breakthrough for mainstream media here, it actually references a number of blogs and Twitters. The really important thing is the fact that the situation was brought to light and rectified within an amazingly short time due to social media. The web may be global, but somthing to keep in mind is that it can also have a hyperlocal aspect.

Meanwhile, back on LiveJournal the news was greeted with a comment stream almst as large as the original announcement. [Mencia Out!!! -NOLA LJ]

Kudos to the Krewe of Orpheus for rectifying this mistake, and more to everyone in New Orleans who used Web2.0 to let Mencia now that we do not forget getting kicked while we were down.  A local victory for Social Media in New Orleans. Now if we could just get that kind of universal momentum against the violence….

George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC