Morgan City fest mired in blog war

A Colorado-based travel writer has caught the ire of St. Mary Parish councilmen and a host of locals with her blog attacking Morgan City for its plans to hold the 2010 Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival in September.

Blogger Clarire Walter, who pens www.travel-babel.blogspot.com, blasted the 75-year-old festival in a June 15 article titled, “Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival – No Joke. It’s still on the calendar for September, and no, I didn’t make it up.”

“Despite the devastation caused by BP’s catastrophic undersea gusher on the Gulf Coast,” Walters writes in the blog, “the good folks of Morgan City, seeming proud of their Cajun tradition and their stinkin’ oil industry, don’t seem to be willing to let the greatest man-made environmental catastrophe in American history stop a good party, or even drop the ‘Petroleum’ part.”

She also suggests this year’s king and queen of the festival should “have the good grace” to wear black, seemingly for the damaged coast and lost lives and waterlife.

“To me, the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival stinks as much as a refinery or petrochemical plant,” Walter concludes. “I’d rather smell Louisiana’s magnolias, orange blossoms and roses.”

St. Mary council chairman Albert Foulcard was the first to fire back, asking the council to support a resolution publicly backing the festival.

“We can’t let anyone attack the pride that we have with the oil and shrimp industries working together, both ecologically and economically,” he said of the state’s oldest chartered festival.

Councilman Logan Fromenthal went one step further at last week’s council meeting, calling any attack on the event a condemnation of St. Mary’s way of life.

“These are depressing times right now,” he said. “It is at times like this, this [festival] more than any other will pull many of our attitudes up – our spirits up. It shows our pride in our culture and heritage.”

In the days since word of Walter’s blog has circulated, Nathalie, Weber, president of the La. Shrimp and Petroleum Festival board, has been busy fielding phone calls.

The celebration is going on as originally planned, she explained, “because these two industries have made our commerce, our way of living, what it is today.”

Weber said Walter’s deduction also fails to take into account the biggest reason St. Mary needs the festival – to boost the local economy.

“Mrs. Walter needs to know that we are sympathetic, heartfelt and empathetic people in south Louisiana,” Weber said. “But she also needs to realize that over 50 non-profit organizations make a good portion of their annual budget from our festival.”

Drawing on south Louisiana’s empathy, festival board member Ed Meyer said he’s willing to forgive Walter. “Lord, forgive her for she knows not what she writes,” he said. “And please, Ms. Walter, consider this a public invitation to attend our festival.”

Public opinion vastly favors allowing the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival to continue as planned.

“Should [it] go on as usual. I say hell yes,” said Connie Thomas, who directed the festival for 15 years. “To be honest, if I were still involved, I would highlight the BP catastrophe and use the festival as a vehicle to raise even more awareness of what this industry and our people do for our country.”

Thomas said of the blog that she’d “never have the audacity to write an article about a place or event that I have never visited. After all, is that not what a travel writer is supposed to do, travel to a place or event then write about the experience?”

Walter promotes her site as having hot travel news, travel trends and as the industry’s source for first-hand domestic and international destination information.

She said Friday that she’d received more than 250 responses to the shrimp fest posting.

“There seems to be an inability or unwillingness among many Morgan City patriots to see their beloved festival as others see it. That’s fine,” she responded in an e-mail.

Walter wished the event success, adding, “I hope that it raises all sorts of money for local causes.”

She added well-wishes for the festival’s royalty, hopes that the spill is finally capped and that, after the leaked oil is captured, the fisheries recover.

“I hope that, in the meantime, the fishermen make money from the clean-up, that more clean-up workers don’t get sick from the oil and chemical dispersants, that another rig doesn’t blow because a judge has ruled that the oil companies don’t have to inspect their platforms after all, that there’s not another hurricane or tropical storm and that Morgan Cityians find something better to do than to keep hurling foul e-mails at me.”

Walter defended her blog, saying she was only taking issue with what she deemed to be bad marketing. “The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech of the press. If, in fact, blogs qualify as ‘press,'” she wrote, “I guess that applies to any topic other than the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.”

Walter also blasted organizer’s failure to acknowledge the BP spill on its website or in literature currently circulating.

“All this adds up to a proud, wounded community that does not seem to have the ability to see itself as others see it – and that largely feels that extraordinarily nasty attacks are an appropriate or effective way to set an outsider straight,” she added.

Walter said her blog posed the question that the festival should be cancelled or the petroleum side be kept “low key” in the wake of the BP disaster.

“I guess most people couldn’t comprehend snarkiness or edginess, common on today’s national media landscape,” she wrote. “I added my amazement that with the world’s attention on the catastrophic oil spill, neither the festival website nor the Petroleum Museum website even acknowledged the spill, as if it hadn’t happened.”