Yeah, that was a long time ago. And this Juan LaFonta doesn’t really come off much like that one.

On the other hand, LaFonta was always a bit “off.” He was the more obnoxious of the two between himself and Cedric Richmond, and Richmond, who ultimately knocked Joseph Cao out of the 2nd District congressional seat in the 2010 election, and he had a term and a half in the Louisiana House of Representatives which began with his serving as the only freshman ever to chair the Legislative Black Caucus and containing a couple of highlights like bringing a bill to promote gay adoptions and sneaking a resolution past a sleepy House that would have called for an investigation of then-governor Bobby Jindal for a slow response to the BP oil spill.

But when he ran and lost in that 2010 congressional race, and when he backed Cao in the runoff against Richmond, that was the end of Juan LaFonta’s political career and he knew it. He didn’t run for re-election in 2011 and started focusing full-time on being a TV plaintiff lawyer.

And for some reason LaFonta and whoever handles his advertising decided it would be a good idea to get Big Freedia to appear in all his commercials.

That began with this entry into the Worst Thing Ever sweepstakes in 2016…

…and the Juan LaFonta Bounce background music became his brand…

…which led to this last year…

…and it has metastasized into what happened three weeks ago and is now on TV in New Orleans…

That Pablo Escobar looking dude on the left is Juan LaFonta now, in case you didn’t pick that up. He’s gone from looking a little like the rapper Heavy D to more of a NOLA-bouncy version of Ron Jeremy.

And if you got in a car wreck he wants to be your lawyer.

It’s enough to make you pine for a lot more tort reform, starting with somebody doing something about lawyers who advertise on TV. But if you’re still watching local television channels in New Orleans or Baton Rouge, you know those stations would absolutely go broke if they didn’t have plaintiff attorneys plying their trade on the airwaves.

And if they’ll take Gordon McKernan and Morris Bart’s money, then Juan LaFonta’s green is fair game, too. No matter how profound the New Orleans cultural suicide might be when everybody gets that new song stuck in their heads.