Please don't start the toppling party without me

Hang on a sec. Just gonna dial up AreTheMonumentsDownYet dot com. Probably still in limbo and... whoah, okay.

New Orleans officials can begin the process of removing the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle and three other monuments at the center of a long-running, city-led effort, a federal appeals court ruled Monday (March 6).

In the ruling, the three-judge panel with the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals found that the groups trying to block the removal of the monuments, Monumental Task Committee and the Louisiana Landmarks Society, failed to present a case that contained a legal argument that showed the monuments should stay up. The court wrote that the groups relied on two legal claims, "both of which wholly lack legal viability or support."

I last took a good look at the Lee monument a little over a week ago when our float passed (Tivoli) Circle.  I only had a second to take a picture. I was a little bit busy at the time. But I did take a moment to think about how ridiculously long the process of getting them down has been.



It's been so long, in fact, that earlier in the season I found myself sighing at monument floats in Druids and Chaos.  It had started to seem like such old news. Can't these guys just let it go?





But then I remembered the specific subject matter in question which is all about.... not letting it go.



Well it looks like the time has finally come now. When can we get started?

Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office said that a request for proposals will be issued within the next day to obtain bids for a company to remove the monuments, which will be stored in a city-owned warehouse until it's determined what will happen to them.

Oh boy. Well let's hope all the bidding contractors make sure they've got their auto insurance up to date. As for the monuments themselves, why not just give them to these parading krewes since they love them so much?  They could each make one into a recurring signature float. We'll give Lee to Chaos, Davis to D'etat, and Beauregard to Druids.  The Liberty Monument, of course, will have to be dragged down St. Charles each year to the Comus Ball where Erroll Laborde will curtsy to it thus signaling the end of Carnival for another season.