Iko Iko

To be sure, I had a fun time in New Orleans. Friday evening led to jazz on Bourbon Street (although the beer price there made DC prices look reasonable), and on Saturday I got to catch one of the Mardi Gras parades that will be snaking through the Quarter over the next few weeks - I got to watch it from a balcony, which was neat.

But all the fun in the Quarter was jarringly incongruous with everything else I saw and learned about the city during that time. To be blunt, I think that the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans is the most important (and least talked about) political issue facing the United States. Within the recovery effort are distilled - in their entirety - the problems facing the nation. The privatization of public infrastructure (including - and most germane to my own work - the privatization of public education). Our relationship with the environment (coastal restoration, climate change). Racism. Poverty. Our capacity to deal with disaster and the inevitable dislocations that follow. The erosion of democratic institutions and accountability. All of these conundrums are being stared down, simultaneously and in fast-forward, in the NOLA recovery efforts. I wish I could say that this reckoning was leading towards a positive resolution, but right now, it's an uphill battle.

I wonder what the culture of New Orleans will look like in 20 years - will the vibrancy of the jazz scene, nurtured in the poor neighborhoods, remain so vital? What happens when a city's cultural flower is cut off from its roots, when the people who are vital to cultural reproduction have been displaced, the vast majority of them with no means to return - or indeed, nothing to which to return? Bourbon Street has always seemed a caricature of the culture of the rest of the city, with its neon lights, hawkers trying to cajole you into the nearest strip club, throngs of college kids stumbling down the streets with their slushee cocktails. Bourbon Street will always be there, a kind of adult Disneyland. But what about the little clubs in the quieter sections of the Quarter, or in the rest of the city, for that matter? Will the city be able to sustain the talent necessary to keep these out of the way havens viable?

The post-Katrina recovery has been notably absent from our election year discourse. To my knowledge, John Edwards has been the only candidate to make an issue of New Orleans' revival, but the impact of that effort has been negligible. But it needs to be talked about. The issues faced by New Orleans are our issues, waiting for a storm, literal or otherwise, to force them to the surface. How the Crescent City deals with these issues will serve as a template, for good of for ill (and right now, for the ill), on how we grapple with these issues on a national scale. It deserves to be at the forefront of our own thoughts and of our political discussions.

Knox Vegas

It's not often that I get to see my hometown (or more accurately, the little city near my hometown) in the news for something other than college sports. But this time, the East Tennesseans in Knoxville did me proud. Wife power, indeed.

Don't you worry your pretty little head Princess Sparkle Pony

I'd be praising Carol Iannone for her candor if it weren't for the fact that I'm staring at the shriveled black heart of conservatism:

We need to maintain the idea of merit so that students will have the abilities needed for the colleges they enter, and the curriculum will not need to be watered down and then supplemented by remediation and special advisers and so forth. But perhaps more important, such affirmative action conveys the impression that society is supposed to do something about the all the inequities of human existence, and that there is something deeply wrong with a society where inequities exist. Inequities are part of life, as every mother must know. The sooner young people learn to stop feeling entitled to redress, and the sooner they get to working hard with the gifts and opportunities they do have, the better.

I've had the misfortune of having to keep on top of the right's specious reasoning regarding affirmative action for the last few weeks. They're pretty smart about it, couching their arguments in rugged individualism, feigned concern for its effects on minorities, and "pragmatic" critiques. But deep down, they all feel like Carol: for some people, life sucks. Get over it, 'cause there's nothing you can fucking do about it, so don't even try.

It's hard to discuss the problems with affirmative action (I think we can all agree that it's not the end-all to solving our entrenched racial problems) with the right when, for them, the racial problem isn't a problem, it's just the way things are.

Yup, the world looks just like it's supposed to when you're living large on the wingnut welfare.

Ixnay on the ynchinglays

Par for the course for the boys over at Fox:

[Fox contributor Pat] CADDELL: It may or may not be. Let me say this. Can I say something, Bob, on this point? Just this -- you cannot run a campaign the way they're doing, saying, "Vote for me because I'm a woman," which is what they're doing.

If Barack Obama was out there saying, "Vote for me because I'm black," or Richardson -- Bill Richardson said, "Vote for me because I'm a Hispanic," people would hang them high. I mean, this is ridiculous.

I'd call this an unfortunate choice of words, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that this might be the exact image Caddell had in mind.

Profiles in douchebaggery

I've always thought of Joe Biden (D-MBNA) as your archetypal gasbag senator, beholden to Wall Street and possessing the charisma of a carp. He is, in fact, far, far worse:

The audience: predominantly Republican [ed: not just Republican. South Carolina Republican!].

Biden humorously took note of that in his opening remarks.

“I want to thank you all for allowing me a trip here to speak to only Republicans. It’s like my hometown. I just won every district in my state except the one I live in,” he quipped.

The crowd howled.

The senator then pounced on a member’s announcement that the club would hold its annual Christmas party at the state Department of Archives and History where members could view the original copy of the state’s Articles of Secession.

Biden asked, “Where else could I go to a Rotary Club where (for a) Christmas party the highlight is looking at the Articles?”

[...]

Biden was on a roll.

Delaware, he noted, was a “slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way.”

The crowd loved it.

Read the whole post over at CorrenteWire. Tell me why this man thinks he has any shot of being president. Tell me why anyone in the Democratic leadership thinks Biden should retain his committee chairmanship. Tell me why he is constantly booked on Sunday gabfests... no, never mind on that last count - he thinks he's running for president. Got it.

Stunning.

Uh, hooray?

It's nice to know that the good ole U.S. of A. is still kicking ass and taking names in some arenas of public life:

A record 7 million people -- one in every 32 U.S. adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, a Justice Department report released yesterday shows.

Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to the report.

Booyah! And can I get the obligatory shout-out to the disproportionate representation of people of color within the criminal justice system?

The study found that racial disparities among prisoners persist. In the 25-29 age group, 8.1 percent of black men -- about one in 13 -- are incarcerated, compared with 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men. The figures are not much different among women. By the end of 2005, black women were more than twice as likely as Hispanics and more than three times as likely as white women to be in prison.

Land of the free, my ass.