Jezebel: Louisiana

Another Congressional Dumbass Thinks The Onion is Real

Erin Gloria Ryan — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:45:00 EST

A Republican Congressman from Louisiana has become the laughingstock of the internet after posting a story from The Onion to his Facebook wall and then commenting on the sad, sad, evil state of the world. Congressmen: just like us! Or, rather, just like our elderly conservative great uncles who think that an "Abortionplex" is a real thing. More »

The Pajama Party Might Be Over in Louisiana

Doug Barry — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:15:00 EST

Shreveport is a city in the Northwest corner of Louisiana you're most likely to recognize as the vague urban setting of a two-star movie because it's the place Hollywood filmmakers go to make par, sub-par, and crappy movies, the most infamously crappy of which was the screen adaptation of Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. However, if the very specifically titled Caddo Parish District 3 Commissioner Michael Williams has his way, Shreveport will earn perhaps an even greater ignominy as the city that banned pajamas...in public. More »

Louisiana Is The 50th State To Introduce Anti-Abortion Legislation

Irin Carmon — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:15:00 EDT

While reporting this post, we were struck by the Guttmacher figure that 49 states have seen anti-abortion legislation introduced. What was the beacon 50th state? More »

Oldest African-American Woman Dies at Age 113

Lauri Apple — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 11:15:00 EST

Shreveport, Louisiana resident Mississippi Winn, the oldest African-American woman in America, has died at age 113. She never married, which suggests she was wise long before reaching old age (LOL). More »

Louisiana Passes Pre-Abortion Ultrasound Requirement

Irin Carmon — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:00:00 EDT

"This is a bill that empowers women,'' said Louisiana state Senator Sharon Broome. She was talking about a bill finalized yesterday that requires women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds — even victims of rape and incest. More »

Hell On Earth

Anna Holmes — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:40:00 EDT

Yesterday, Associated Press photographer Charlie Riedel took a devastating series of images of oil-soaked wildlife on East Grand Terre Island, Louisiana. At left, a brown pelican covered in crude. More of the set can be found here. [Boston Globe] More »

Scarlett Buys A Farm; Gaga's Lupus Test "Borderline Positive"

Dodai Stewart — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:00:00 EDT

Is Scarlett Johansson ditching the Hollywood life for something earthier?

As I Lay Dying

Anna Holmes — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:10:00 EDT

[Barataria Bay, Louisiana; May 23. Image via AP]

Man Vs. Wild

Anna Holmes — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:10:00 EDT

[Gulf of Mexico, May 9. Image via AP]

Louisiana Interracial Couple Refused Marriage License. Not 200 Years Ago. Today.

Dodai Stewart — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:20:00 EDT

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Keith Bardwell, the parish justice of the peace says. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer." [AP] More »

Low Body Confidence Leads To Drunken Sex? • Drunk Mice Make Bad Decisions

Katy Kelleher — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:40:00 EDT

• According to a recent poll, 1 in 20 British women has never had sex sober. Also, a "staggering," 75% of women like to have a glass of wine before hopping into bed with their boyfriend or husband. • More »

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Anna Holmes — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:15:00 EDT

[Port Sulphur, Louisiana; May 13. Image via Getty]

Bobby Jindal Seeks To Stave Off Another Hurricane By Eliminating Gay Rights

Megan Carpentier — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:00:00 EST

Louisiana governor and 2012 Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal recently created the Louisiana Commission on Marriage and Family. If you're wondering why that's a problem, recall at Arkansas' anti-gay-adoption law. More »

Dine N' De-Crown

Maria — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:20:00 EDT

Lindsay Evans was stripped of her Miss Louisiana Teen USA tiara yesterday after she and three friends were arrested for running out on a $46.07 restaurant bill in Bossier City, Louisiana over the weekend. Cops caught up with Evans and her pals after Evans mistakenly left behind her purse and a bag of pot at the restaurant. Oops! Evans says that she paid her share of the bill with "a nice crisp 20" and that she is "only human" for leaving her purse and pot behind when she decided to run out with her pals. [NY Post, TMZ] More »

Louisiana Representative John Labruzzo is...

Megan Carpentier — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:40:00 EDT

Louisiana Representative John Labruzzo is a unique problem solver. Recognizing that generational poverty is a problem for many people in his state, he's dispensed with the usual solutions of education, training, access to reduced- or low-cost family planning or any normal poverty-reduction programs in favor of paying poor people to get sterilized. What? It could significantly eliminate generational poverty by eliminating generations! Anyway, when he was called upon to defend his shitty idea, he blamed it all on the media blowing it up for ratings' sake, even as he successfully danced around blaming it all on black people. I dunno, I can think of one person who probably ought to refrain from breeding. He's named "John LaBruzzo." [Think Progress, Feministing] More »

"The Mother Of All Storms"

Anna Holmes — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:00:00 EDT

For those in southern Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, we don't need to tell you about the Category 4 storm currently tearing its way north in the Gulf of Mexico. For those who aren't there — or don't know — a massive, massive hurricane is bearing down on the Gulf Coast of the United States, one that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is now calling "the storm of the century". At the request of a number of readers, we're putting up this short post — not to announce news updates about the storm (we suggest you rely on television, radio, the internet and other people for that) — but to provide a forum for interested parties to converse. Good luck, all, and Godspeed. [CNN] More »

Hurricane Katrina, Three Years Later: A New Memoir And An Approaching Storm

Dodai Stewart — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:20:00 EDT

Tomorrow marks the third anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, there's a new storm on the horizon: The latest on Gustav is that it could hit the coast of Louisiana — and New Orleans — with a similar impact. Earlier this week, Salon ran an interview with Phyllis Montana-LeBlanc, a woman who's considered the breakout "star" of Spike Lee's 2006 documentary When The Levees Broke. Montana-LeBlanc has written a memoir — completed over the last two years, in her FEMA trailer. She's let go of much of her anger. "You can continue to hate and blame, but that's not constructive," she says. "You have to get past it at some point. At the time, all the dead bodies [I saw in the media reports] were African-Americans. And when it's just black body after black body you start to wonder if all those people who died were white — if their lives were considered 'more valid' by the people in charge — maybe you would have seen a quicker response. Honestly, I still wonder if more people would have been saved." More »

Does Obama Need A Little (Not Mc) Kaine To Save The World?

Megan Carpentier — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:00:00 EDT

It's a beautiful morning here, one of those mornings no one in Beijing ever has anymore where you can pretend it's the 70s and the world is less polluted but visions of stagflation might dance in your head, or you can be like Moe and I and pretend it's the 90s and read about 90s music and China's human rights record and WTO negotiations and wish you lived in Berlin instead. But it's 2008 and real questions await like: What EXACTLY is a green collar job? Will Obama embrace Virginia governor Tim Kaine more fully than in this picture? And why do we care what some crazy guy's motives were for shooting a bunch of people in a church when he is obviously crazy and thus his motivations are no more explicable that the motives of any other crazy person, including the first guy that ever sent me a crap-anything-from-a-dude...or Dan Quayle's? These questions and many, many others will stay unanswered after the jump, at least until you get to the comment threads. More »

Oprah Makes Oz A Star; Girl Gangs In Central America; Why Men Are Idiots

maria — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:40:00 EDT

Ed Note: We hear about and see so many stories that we can't find the time to comment on that we're gonna try something new: "Leftovers", a daily "accounting" of the stuff we had to leave behind. Let us know if you like it, and, obviously, feel free to click through on the stories and flesh them out for everybody.

Study Shows Sex Ed Works For (Some) Teens

Jessica — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:30:00 EST

New evidence suggests that teenage boys who receive sex education are three times more likely to use condoms when they lose their virginity. And that's not the only good news: The same study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, showed that all teens who receive some kind of sex education will delay sex until at least age fifteen. The CDC did not differentiate what kid of sex education was taught — it treated abstinence-focused education the same way it studied more progressive forms of sex ed — though research released earlier this year showed that abstinence only programs don't really work. (Interestingly, the only form of sex ed required in Jamie Lynn Spears' home state of Louisiana is abstinence only; Jessica Sierra's home state of Florida also requires abstinence only education but does not impose either sex ed or contraceptive practices on its students.) More »