Amid Revelry, Evidence of City's Cruel Transformation

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 24 — For a long time I hated Mardi Gras, and tried to flee the city in those weeks.... Bret Johnston, 4, waved as his father, David Johnston, held him on a ladder to watch the Excalibur parade in Metairie. It was the opposite of what made New Orleans beguiling, or so it seemed to me: loud and raucous, the city's ritual self-abasement enforced mass jollity. The workaday New Orleans, underpopulated, green and quiet, was best in its absolute regard for individual states of joy or gloom.

Bret Johnston, 4, waved as his father, David Johnston, held him on a ladder to watch the Excalibur parade in Metairie. It was the opposite of what made New Orleans beguiling, or so it seemed to me: loud and raucous, the city's ritual self-abasement enforced mass jollity. The workaday New Orleans, underpopulated, green and quiet, was best in its absolute regard for individual states of joy or gloom.

For years I failed to see the point, a distaste reinforced when visiting hordes from the mainland let their hair down and turned the French Quarter into a "Disneyland for drunks," as a dyspeptic bookseller friend put it. The history of Kings of Rex going back decades was commemorated in some of the city's grandest homes, while the city's crumbling social compact failed to receive similar attention. I knew too that some Jewish families in the Uptown neighborhood left town during Carnival because they would not be invited to the fancier balls.

Meanwhile in Houston...crime continues to go unchecked with 7 out of 10 of the city's most wanted fugitives being products of New Orleans. The murder rate is up significantly, car break ins are now a nightly occurance like never before. I live near downtown and have personally witnessed teams of thieves working the streets. My car has been broken into twice in recent weeks while in the garage. My girlfriend's car was broken into as well. There were 28 broken car windows when everyone evacuated Houston (novel concept) as our Hurricane approached. Evacuees are still living in hotels on the tax payers' dime, spending all their time arguing to extend their eviction date rather than actually looking for jobs. Every restaurant in town is hiring. Our mayor is trying to scam money out of FEMA to pay for the 700 police officers we are short because of gross negligence at every level of local politics. I don't know how he can ask for money with a straight face when his own mayor pro temp has just been busting for "reallocating budget surpluses into year end bonuses." What is the answer? Constantly cry to whoever will listen that Bush and FEMA aren't sensitive to the needs of the evacuees. For Bill White it is a win/win...take the tax dollars from the greedy republicans in town and use it to guarantee leases for New Orleans evacuees (and anyone else that fills out the paperwork) for 18 months. Totally ignore the fact that we are short 700 police officers. Totally ignore the safety and well being of the taxpayers and their property in exchange for the prospect of importing 200,000 more democrats. Demand that the Bush administration reimburse you for the cost of all the leases as well as any other budget shortfalls you may have created over the years and then pull the race card if they dare to ask you where any of the money is going.

- Looks like God, in His fashion, did some washing.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. " -Tytler

"It was the opposite of what made New Orleans beguiling, or so it seemed to me: loud and raucous, the city's ritual self-abasement enforced mass jollity. The workaday New Orleans, underpopulated, green and quiet, was best in its absolute regard for individual states of joy or gloom."

I'm trying to figure out what this means. The city was best (excelled at? was most benificent while?) in its caring about who is happy and who is not (or things that are gay or gloomy?)? Can't do it, it makes NO SENSE. This is an extremely poorly written paragraph in a rather poorly written story. Was not an editor available? I can't believe the po mo drivel the Times is putting out these days.

..."New Orleans was, briefly, a city almost entirely of impoverished African-Americans. The ruined neighborhoods belonged to them. I was struck by the sight of people, hanging out in the street, in a dry zone by the river on one of those days. Then the people were gone, and the city was empty."

I can tell you, it's a good thing for NO. The city will rebound, it's been flooded many times before. In the past, we didn't have a left-wing MSM inflating and conflating things out of proportion in its zeal to attack a sitting US president in wartime.

I've heard stories from locals who were there after Betsy in 1965, how the NOPD shot blacks who were invading homes, looting , assaulting whites. It was not widely publicized, the 9th ward was destroyed just like after Katrina, NO came back. NO has come back from floods and hurricanes, and will come back again. We don't need twerps writing in the NYT, fairies from CNN, wringing their little wrists and crying over the po' black folk who were displaced. It's a good thing for NO that the thugs are gone, and if it also washed out a lot of the welfare population, good also, but not good for the local democrat politicians...that after all is what all the moaning and sobbing is about, in the end.

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