Nagin: Fill Ground Zero With Chocolate

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin today recommended that the World Trade Center site be filled with chocolate.

Nagin’s comments came on a fundraising trip to New York after his controversial comments about the World Trade Center rebuilding last week on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program.

When a correspondent pointed out flood-damaged cars still on the streets of New Orleans’ devastated Ninth Ward. Nagin replied, “You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed, and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair.”

After the program aired, Nagin was widely criticized in New York as “ignorant,” “insensitive,” and “incompetent.”

“I know that some of my past comments have been misunderstood and have hurt people,” Nagin said today.

“But now I want to be positive. And delicious.”

Nagin’s plan, called “The Sweet Rebuild,” calls for the massive hole created by the excavation of the rubble left by the World Trade Center towers to be filled with a mixture of liquid, semi-liquid, and solid chocolates of all types.”

“So many people of many different backgrounds lost their lives here,” Nagin said. “So you need to have some classic milk chocolate, some dark, European-type stuff, and even some semi-sweet and nutty varieties.”

“Instead of sitting around criticizing me,” Nagin continued, “you New York people have to get some no-bid contracts going with some candy makers.”

The chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency created to oversee the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site and downtown Manhattan, said that he had received Nagin’s proposal.

“We take all suggestions for how to rebuild and preserve this sacred site seriously,” chairman Kevin Rampe said in a statement.

“Or at least we did.”

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