The Advocate: Why Harry Shearer Has Become a Tireless Spokesman for New Orleans

"The Advocate" by Chris Rose for the Times Picayune, Sunday, November 11, 2007

Harry Shearer is one of those multifaceted personalities whose career has always been characterized with lots of dashes and slashes; he is an actor/writer/comedian/political satirist/ broadcaster/commentator/blogger -- among other job titles.

Perhaps his greatest fame -- and best pay -- has come from his role as the animated voices of Mr. Burns and Ned Flanders on "The Simpsons." But for residents of his adopted home of New Orleans, his preeminent job for the past two years might best be described as: cheerleader/truth teller/banner waver.

Since the fall of 2005, perhaps no celebrity has matched Shearer's steady, visible and insistent support for and defense of the city. At risk of alienating fans who'd rather not think too hard or too much about it, Shearer continues to use all forms of media to challenge Americans to remain dialed in to the battered physical and emotional landscapes of the Gulf Coast.

How Shearer ended up as one of the city's chief spokesmen, sometimes assigned the exalted position of "The Voice of New Orleans," is as multifaceted as the man himself. One motivation, he admits, was guilt.

"I was off making a movie during the first two months of the disaster," he says. "I was suffering, but at long distance. And when I finally came back for the first time, in November, everyone was telling me how lucky I was to have missed the worst part; that I had gotten in after the smell had dissipated a little bit."

Shearer and his wife, chanteuse Judith Owen, have had a French Quarter condo for 12 years. It started as a vacation getaway but in recent years has served as their home for up to half the year. It was undamaged by Katrina.

"So, yes, I felt lucky," he says. "But yet, I still felt: When it was all so much worse, I was off making a movie. And I realized that I wasn't going to be spending my next six months or a year doing what everybody else was going to be doing -- plunging into their insurance companies and Road Home and all the rest -- so I figured that energy should be used for keeping -- no, getting -- the story of the city out and keeping it alive."

Another motivating factor, he says, was the abdication of support from other celebrities with New Orleans connections, folks who had the power and influence to get their voices heard and make things happen -- but who didn't.

"Seeing certain people of certain fame trash the city publicly just made me more determined to try and balance the scale in the other direction," he says. "I don't hold anything against anybody who got whacked and split, but people who had nothing bad happen to them and then just walked away saying 'screw you' ticked me off."

On this subject, Shearer doesn't call out any names in particular, save one -- that of another New Orleans celebrity transplant named Harry.

"I'm the un-Harry Anderson," Shearer says of the notoriously prickly TV star whose post-storm departure from New Orleans was accompanied by a slew of withering comments that did neither him nor the city any justice. "I'm trying to be the nice Harry," Shearer says. "I'm trying to rescue the name."

And so Shearer blogs incessantly on the popular Huffington Post Web site, spreading the straight dope on the city and referring readers to newspaper and magazine stories. He regularly invites New Orleans musicians, chefs and artists on his weekly syndicated radio show. He went on "Celebrity Jeopardy," representing -- and winning $50,000 for -- the Tipitina's Foundation.

He recently wrote a guest editorial for The San Francisco Chronicle, which heralded the city's spirit and can-do-ness.

"Despite it all, the city's joie de vivre, its celebration of the quotidian as well as the occasion, and its bawdy, take-no-prisoners sense of humor survive," he wrote. "(And) slowly, perhaps more slowly than they imagined, New Orleanians are sending a message that the rest of the nation seems to have difficulty receiving: Today, two years after their world got turned upside down, New Orleans is Bootstrap City."

Yeah, you right, Harry! And on and on he goes, on Bill Maher's HBO program, on National Public Radio, on every radio station in Scotland during a publicity blitz there -- anywhere and everywhere he can get people to listen. So, naturally, two years into this thing, some fans are telling him it's time to give it a rest.

"All the time," he confirms. "The same thing happens to Brian Williams (from the 'NBC Nightly News'). And my point with Brian, which I made to him personally, was maybe if he told people why they should care as opposed to just doing victim stories all the time, maybe they wouldn't be bitching so much."

Why people should care, he says, is simple, an argument well-worn in New Orleans: "People outside of here should care because their tax dollars paid to flood the city. Their tax dollars paid to do it wrong. That's a pretty big story, I think. And my prediction is that five years from now, somebody in Washington will win a Pulitzer Prize for finally discovering that."

Another reason for Katrina fatigue, he says, is racism. "It comes through every pore of what some people say. And for that, I have to blame the national media, which framed this very early on as a 'poor suffering black' story. They couldn't get their cameras out to St. Bernard Parish. They got them to the Convention Center and figured, well: That's all we need. And so, they misframed the story, and being New York liberals, it appealed to them that way anyway."

But despite -- or maybe because of -- a growing chorus of fans who think Shearer needs new subject matter, he keeps coming up with new ways to spread the gospel. His most recent offering is the lovingly crafted "Crescent City Stories," a sweet, poignant and melodic series of interviews and musical cameos currently airing on the new entertainment Web site www.MyDamnChannel.com.

"I was thinking: OK, what am I going to do next?" he says. "So much of what has come out of here in video documentation has been done by New Yorkers and I thought, as a quasi-local, it would be a good thing to let other locals give their view of things. And I thought -- again -- I could try to counteract the barrage of victim stories we get from the national media. The idea was to put some people I know for their loquacity and their cogency on the air, without an agenda, and just let them tell me something about their last two years."

"Crescent City Stories" debuted its first episode several weeks ago and Shearer has added a new one each week. In addition to his own commentary, he has profiled LSU hurricane specialist Ivor van Heerden, singer/composer Phillip Manuel and torch singer Leah Chase.

Ambiance for most of the episodes is set by local keyboard master David Torkanowsky, who is also profiled. An emotional apex of the series is certainly when Torkanowsky mournfully accompanies Chase as she sings: "Was this storm sent to make me realize what living is/It's the beauty of love/The joy of Life/Is this what 'rebirth' means?"

Printed words do not do the segment justice. Go see it for yourself. All the stories are archived on the site, along with a wealth of Shearer's more familiar brand of non-Katrina related political satire.

For a one-man phenomenon, Shearer smartly underplays his own role in "Crescent City Stories," simply serving as on-air interviewer and occasional narrator. It's great stuff, and uncharacteristically unfunny for Shearer.

"Most of the subjects were musicians, so there was a way to have music carry through it all," Shearer says. "But it was all mainly about counteracting that steady diet of 'poor pitiful me' that we get from the national media."

And they're great pieces to remind locals why we love it here, part of the continuing and sometimes arduous process of loving this place -- and a phenomenon Shearer recently experienced.

"I was just showing a friend of mine from Great Britain, a travel writer, around town," he says. "And, watching it all through her eyes enriched my appreciation of the city. What I saw in the people -- what came through -- was the ability, no matter how much angst you may be going through, to experience joy. And that's part of what makes this place different from, say, New York or L.A., where, no matter how much advantage you may have, you're always open to experiencing unhappiness; where, no matter how good things are, you find a reason to be unhappy."

All this cheerleading and boosterism is a far cry from the Harry Shearer who carved a career as a funnyman with no particular agenda. And he is well aware of that.

"When I was a kid, I was relentless about making fun of celebrities with causes. You know, pick a disease, any disease. So to change gears like that and suddenly have a cause and now be asked: 'You're the voice of a cartoon character; why should we believe what you have to say about this?' I guess you could say there's a credibility problem there.

"But this is not what I would choose to be doing -- if I had a choice," he says. "There's a part of me -- a part in all of us, I guess -- that would like to just go back to the way it all was before, just doing what I used to do.

"I wish circumstances were different. I wish there were more well-known people from here or living here who had reason to do this, but there aren't, so we all just play the cards we are dealt."
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Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com, or (504) 826-3309, or (504) 352-2535.