3 Comments so far ↓

• RPC // Feb 19, 2008 at 6:28 pm

  Langford is a visionary with an appealing persona. My two immediate neighbors (a retired white cop and a black professional woman) were both among his enthusiastic backers in the election. He’s bursting with ideas, and he inspires people, even former adversaries. His charismatic Christian faith (however uncool it seems to us comfy white folks on the Southside) puts the mayor in touch with the struggling majority in a city full of overlooked people who desperately want to do better. I want to give Langford credit for this. Religious faith gives many Birmingham residents the means to keep going under conditions that would drive many over-the-mountain suburbanites to despair. But there’s more than one kind of faith. There’s the courageous, patient kind that redeemed our city through love when it was dominated by hate. Then there’s the childish kind that treats religion as some sort of wish-fulfilling magic for getting whatever you want. I don’t want to stoop to parody, or try to make Langford look stupid, because he isn’t. I expect he knows that God is not a cosmic Santa Claus with presents for good boys and girls. But Langford does have an enormous, morally crippling blind spot that he is clearly unaware of. For all his gifts, he’s a poor judge of his own motives and actions, and of those of his friends. He won’t listen to critics, even friendly ones. (He can’t even seem to imagine how a friend could also be a critic.) So Mayor Langford’s creative imagination keeps getting puffed up by his large ego and self-centered faith, and it desperately needs some balance — some earthy realism, the ability to laugh at himself, or some wise friends who love him too much to tell him what he wants to hear. He seems to lack all these things. What with his assuredness, his charisma, and the urgent hopes of his supporters, Langford succeeds in leading a fantasy life at public expense. He doesn’t mean any harm by it; in fact, he’s sure he’s doing more good for Birmingham than anyone else. As for John Katopodis, Al LaPierre, Milton McGregor, Bobby Lowder and the rest, they’ve just been helping hom do the Lord’s work. At some deep, unexamined level, what Larry Langford wants is what God wants, so it must be good for Birmingham. If Langford winds up in jail, I suppose he will be as baffled and angry as a man can be.

• Philip Griffith // Feb 27, 2008 at 3:14 pm

  Langford alone scares the death out of me. Add in Milton McGregor, Bobby Lowder and the other casts of idiots this guy surrounds himself with, it’s a recipe for disaster.

• Our mayor is arrested « à la Rob // Dec 1, 2008 at 4:50 pm

  [...] in February I tried to set out my complicated view of Mayor Langford in a comment at The Terminal. His charismatic faith and his urgent energy helped him beat a crowded field of [...]