It has been a busy month for me and the blog has paid the price. I told you it was gonna be like this. Not that it matters, when you can just go and read Oyster as he reviews the book I'm reading. You guys are supposed to be reading Rising Tide as well, you know. It's this year's OBONO book. Your instinct may be to say that OBONO is a really gay idea and I'm not here to argue with you on that point. I'm not too keen on being told to read a book just because a bunch of other idiots are doing it at the same time. This may be why I dropped out of grad school. Or maybe it's just why I can't watch Oprah.
On the other hand, this is a book worth reading. Oyster points to the book's concluding point about how 20th centruy New Orleans's economic vitality was strangled by its ruling cabal of old money. Barry could not possibly be more spot on about the city's aristocracy. Here was a group of bankers and lawyers who more or less dictated public policy to the mayor, the city council, and the Governor, who exercised near absolute control over the city's major newspapers, who decided to cut the levee in St. Bernard Parish and flood out thousands of residents there, not to protect New Orleans from flood waters, but to protect investor confidence in their businesses. There is also a lot of great stuff in this book about the political fight over river control policy, about the development of and race relations in the Mississippi Delta Region, about how elite New Orleans society is controlled by the old line gentlemen's clubs and Carnival Krewes. It's the most fascinating thing I've read in the still young 2005 and I'm only three quarters of the way through. Thank you, OBONO. You wankers!
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