Diacritiques

Debi Jones Joan Touzet, who blogs at An Atypical Life, has put up an uncensored recording (mp3 file, 3.2 MB) of the interview that the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, gave to the radio station WWL-AM yesterday. I am locally mirroring the file here; another mirror is here.

Via Debi Jones, who links to more mirrors. You can also listen to the WWL-AM live feed .

I understand that a “bleeped” version has been or is being aired on CNN International here in Europe. This is a remarkable document that I think is worth listening to to the end.

Quote (added later — I wasn’t sure about the “doggone” part):

And they don’t have a clue what’s going on down here. They flew down here, one time, two days after the doggone event was over, with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn — excuse my French, everybody in America, but I am pissed.

Regular blogging will resume shortly. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I have given Anna Stevenson’s excellent transcript a once-over (a small number of corrections and additions of disfluencies, mostly).

Eric Idle, in his own words the “sixth nicest” Python, has recently been fined $5000 for pronouncing the word “fuck” during a radio show. He duly sat down and wrote a sweet little song dedicated to the FCC. You can download the mp3 from Monty Python themselves; the lyrics and another copy of the song are on Lisa Rein’s site. Monty Python’s site is well worth exploring, by the way.

Idle says it would cost a quarter of a million dollars to play the song on the US airwaves. I counted the swearwords and insults — there’s one every five seconds or thereabouts — and think he overstates its merits a little; but not by very much.

Originally via magpie, with thanks.