Everywhere else it's just Deflategate

Krewe of King Arthur 2006


It's... just... all... too much. 

The battle for control of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans moved into court Thursday (Jan. 23) as family members associated with Rita Benson LeBlanc filed a lawsuit claiming that the teams' owner and family patriarch Tom Benson is incompetent and is being directed by a manipulative wife and her allies at the highest level of the sports empire.

The suit was filed one day after Tom Benson unexpectedly announced plans to transfer future ownership of the clubs to wife, Gayle, cutting off his daughter, Renee LeBlanc, and his two grandchildren, Ryan LeBlanc and Rita Benson LeBlanc, who until recently had been designated as the heir apparent.

Have you read the lawsuit yet?  Of course you have. It's the tale of a great king and his three heartbroken heirs separated from their patriarch by an interloping witch.

The suit attempts to paint Gayle Benson, 67, as a gold-digging opportunist who has taken advantage of her husband's unfit state of health and ostracized family members in grasping for power and riches.

She keeps him locked away and feeds him only ice cream and wine.  (No, not wine ice cream. You can't buy that in Louisiana.)  She's taken control of the family fortunes and all of the king's communications. (Sometimes to very strange effect, indeed.)

So now the exiled heirs have appealed to the law courts to throw out the usurper and restore their inheritance. Nevermind, of course, that the princess may not be the wisest heir apparent and that the king is not all he's cracked up to be. Nevermind, as well, that all the great fortune they're all fighting over derives directly from the fame (and blood) the warrior class they keep about them and, more fundamentally, from the taxes, faith, and tribute paid to them by the masses.

But, this is New Orleans, after all, and we can't seem to get enough of our make-believe royalty. Especially this time of year.



Anyway, I tried to warn you guys last year this kind of instability is the reason the civilized world has moved away from absolutist hereditary government.  The fates of nations should not depend solely on the fickle vanity of kings.