Behind the Mask and After the Ball: Consequences
Editor's Column from LCV Winter 2007-08 (December 5, 2007)

Nothing is more salubrious than reading the national newspapers, or travel to other cities, to serve as an antidote to the conviction that New Orleans is the only city in the country that is politically and operationally dysfunctional. This is not to imply that we should not be self-flagellating or be holding ourselves and our officials accountable for our slovenly ways, both visible in our streets and neighborhoods and in our political and business practices, only to note that we are most certainly not alone. One wouldn't think it would be a competition one would wish to win. So charmed are we by our own roguery, it once was suggested the Louisiana license plate ought to read "A State of Indictment." Yet in recent years the governors of such states as Alabama, and Arizona have been incarcerated along with mayors from Rhode Island, senators from Illinois, congressmen from California, and substantial numbers of legislators from South Carolina and Kentucky, to name but a few.

Fading Charm

Accustomed to driving through neighborhoods that love to bruit their historic character, but which seem content to wallow in trash, rutted streets, and a general disrepair of homes (this for decades before the onslaught of Katrina), I have been amused to encounter an even more lamentable lack of street-level amenities in such world cities as New York, a city frantic and graceless and coated with so much grime and festooned with towering, reeking piles of trash along tony Fifth Avenue and adjacent midtown streets even when the sanitation workers are not on strike, it makes Howard Hughes' white-gloved phobias seem reasonable. Just like home, I've encountered cashiers baffled by the prospect of making change or even operating their cash registers in Boston, Detroit, and Minneapolis.

But post-Katrina, our dysfunctional foibles and practices have ceased to charm, and in fact threaten to abet us in hastening our own demise. It is beyond coincidence so many of our native sons are observing the same phenomenon, despite widely divergent political and social perspectives. Thus we have the scion of old New Orleans, the normally ebulliently liberal and avant-garde Michael Lewis, saying, "What is it about this place that makes it different? Why is it so singularly devoid of, let's say, business leadership? Why is it so charming? Why does an America that worships success find this place so appealing when it is so clearly a failed place? It's something about the culture of the place ..."

Writing in virtual harmony is my longtime friend and colleague, the generally trenchant cultural critic and consultant James B. Borders: "And who think it believable for a character named DeCay to turn out to be a rotten civil servant? Or that he would pour his ill-gotten gains into an almost egregiously lavish lifestyle? Did he think no one would notice? Did he think no one would care? ... Same thing goes for the school board, the rest of City Hall, the courts, the Regional Transit Authority, the Sewerage & Water Board and other public entities. What Kool-Aid have these people been imbibing? ... Somehow, many of us have lost our way, our minds, our moral compass - even in places of worship. It's stunning to think about the numbers of 'respectable' people who have been and will be convicted of felonies before year end."

Rounding Out the Chorus

And rounding out the trio we have the long-time conservative critic of New Orleans traditional practices Benjamin C. Toledano: "The grossly debilitating nature of the system cannot be exaggerated... Without vision, without competent leadership, above all without an ethic of upward mobility by virtue of merit, New Orleans could not prepare itself to enter that period of great national growth and prosperity. In fact, it actively chose not to. Given the demands of exclusivity, only a few were permitted to participate, to profit, and, sadly enough, to plunder. Bankers lent money to two groups, those who did not need it and those who were fellow club members; in most instances the two were one. Lawyers were engaged by virtue not of their talents but of their associations; so it went in the fields of insurance and financial services, and so it went across the board, in a daisy chain of 'class.' ...

When cities die, there is no formal cremation or burial, no bang, hardly even a whimper. Buses keep running and garbage gets collected - sometimes. People go on eating, drinking, sleeping, relieving themselves, cursing, murdering, even loving. But they do so as individuals who are no longer a part of a larger family, a community with legitimate cultural, economic, and human traditions. Such was the death of New Orleans as, over the years, tourists continued to eat, drink, and merrily clap their hands to the music. Beneath the mask of those activities, reality struggled vainly for recognition."

Given our current state and the twin inheritances of Katrina's wrath and our own persistent and generational dysfunction, the dire refrain of our writers needs to be heard now or never.

—Michael Sartisky, Editor-In-Chief