Self made tyrants

From the Advocate's obit of Blaine Kern this morning.

What Popeyes kingpin Al Copeland was to chicken, Kern was to Carnival: a brash, shameless character who came from nothing, launched an unconventional Big Easy empire, and lived unapologetically large and loud as a result.

Ah yes the myth of the "self-made" man. 

Carnival was traditionally the province of the city's Uptown elite. Kern, of German and Italian descent, had been born on the wrong side of the Mississippi River. But his artistic and sales skills afforded him access to Carnival's inner circle. Once there, he aimed to make a difference.

"When I started out, if you were Jewish, black, Irish, Italian, you couldn’t get in these clubs,” he said in 2018. “You had to be a WASP. It was crazy. It was a different world.”

"Once there, he aimed to make a difference."  Did he really, though?  Or was he just in the right place to be useful to an expanding class of business elites at just the right time and make a lot of money in the process?  The Carnival club hierarchy may be more complex, diverse, even, than it once was, but its royalty, so to speak, is still very much a manifestation of wealth and status. Kern may have "come from nothing" but it was only so he and his heirs could arrive in the company of the same owners, bosses, and real estate speculators who profit from the very poverty from which Kern was fortunate enough to emerge. What is the good in that? What difference is made?

It's interesting how often figures like Copeland and Kern, having grown up among poverty and racial exclusion, resolve not to take down these systems of oppression but instead to weasel their way into the oppressing class. 

Tom Benson was another example. There's also some news today about one of his several late in life local brand rescue projects.  

New Orleans has been hoisting Dixie beer for more than a century. Soon, that beer and the company behind it will have a new name.

In a statement released today, Gayle Benson, owner of Dixie Brewery and the city’s Saints and Pelicans franchises said her company will change the Dixie name. The new name for Dixie has not yet been decided, but it will be chosen with feedback from the local community, Benson said.

Poor Gayle. Saddled with this nostalgia product that she now has to reinvent.  Guess the new beer will have to be a "self-made" brand.