Kicking you off the internet

It's actually been less of a swift kick and more of a gradual lowering of everybody down off the internet. Kind of like coastal erosion, maybe. Anyway, like I've been saying for years, this was always going to happen. Because it's always been happening.

The internet’s singular power, in its early gold-rush days, was its flexibility. People could imagine a dazzling array of new uses for the network, and as quick as that, they could build and deploy them — a site that sold you books, a site that cataloged the world’s information, an application that let you “borrow” other people’s music, a social network that could connect you to anyone.

You didn’t need permission for any of this stuff; some of these innovations ruined traditional industries, some fundamentally altered society, and many were legally dubious. But the internet meant you could just put it up, and if it worked, the rest of the world would quickly adopt it.

But if flexibility was the early internet’s promise, it was soon imperiled. In 2003, Tim Wu, a law professor now at Columbia Law School (he’s also a contributor to The New York Times), saw signs of impending corporate control over the growing internet. Broadband companies that were investing great sums to roll out faster and faster internet service to Americans were becoming wary of running an anything-goes network.

Some of the new uses of the internet threatened their bottom line. People were using online services as an alternative to paying for cable TV or long-distance phone service. They were connecting devices like Wi-Fi routers, which allowed them to share their connections with multiple devices. At the time, there were persistent reports of broadband companies seeking to block or otherwise frustrate these new services; in a few years, some broadband providers would begin blocking new services outright.

It's been fun. 

It's all about kicking you off the internet

I guess I shouldn't be as surprised as I am when supposedly savvy internet users applaud the inexorable trend toward firmer corporate control over internet content.

Blame anonymity, blame politicians, blame human nature. But a growing number of websites are reining in the Wild West of online commentary. Companies including Google and the Huffington Post are trying everything from deploying moderators to forcing people to use their real names in order to restore civil discourse. Some sites, such as Popular Science, are banning comments altogether.

Oh here we go again with the "civil discourse." You'd think that after all this time we would have graduated from this type of condescension.  But, no, the important people in the legitimate media still despise their readers. If only they understood how unimportant they really are, we wouldn't keep having these misunderstandings.  But we covered this earlier today and it's a bit of a digression anyway.

The inflated egotism of professional media persons (and other pompous laypeople) does at least partially explain why people keep missing the point about the comments controversy. Despite the loud kvetching over civility, this doesn't have anything to do with whether you have to worry your pretty little heads about someone hurting your feelings in a comment thread. Media companies don't care about that. If "civil discourse" was what mattered imagine just how different the great mass of content produced for you by professional media might look.

What this is about is moving independent voices off of the big internet media platforms. The big dogs are here now.  They're glad you're watching. They would still like to sell you to their advertisers. In fact, they'd like to sell more of you than they've ever had access to before.

Online privacy will be a thing of the past. (If you thought it already was, believe me, things could get worse.) The ISPs will try to read all of your content so they can sell you to advertisers. New “troll tolls” will force content creators and others to pay discriminatory fees just to reach people online — and will require the rest of us to pony up for “premium” content.

"Your content" in the emerging environment is mostly about the things you "like" on Facebook, the products you purchase on Amazon, the movies you watch on Netflix, the websites you visit, even the content of your private email correspondence.  What it doesn't mean anymore is your participation in the larger public dialogue.  What was once considered a leveling public square is fast becoming a pay-for-play model where your "reach" is directly related to the depth of your purse.

And this is why we're moving away from online comment forums on major media platforms. After a decade of relative democratization, the "new media" is finally taking on the familiar top-down model of old media institutions who are figuring out how to get things arranged to their liking. I don't doubt that the new discourse will be celebrated for being more "civil." But I can guarantee that it will be far less public.

Kicking you off the internet

They've almost figured out the trick now.

For corporate media, the story of Russia covertly influencing the country promotes a climate where they can re-tighten their grip on the means of communication by accusing alternative media on both left and right of being Russian-sponsored “fake news.” As previously reported (FAIR.org, 8/22/18), under the guise of protecting readers, big media companies like Google, YouTube and Bing have changed their algorithms, resulting in devastating drops in traffic for reputable alternative media sites. Alternative media has been deleted, de-ranked, de-listed and de-monetized, effectively sidelining them. In response to ostensible Russian meddling, media giant Facebook announced last week (Washington Post, 10/11/18) it had shut down over 800 US accounts and pages for “inauthentic behavior,” a term even more nebulous than “fake news.” Included in the 800 were several police accountability watchdog groups and other alternative media, adding to its recent (temporary) deleting of TeleSUR English. 

It's been a tumultuous transition period in the media business. The most distortive trope we have to describe it would have us believe "the internet killed journalism."  But that's not anything like what's been going on.  Capitalism has been killing journalism for a long time.

"Your local paper got bought out by a conglomerate and now runs Jonah Goldberg and Ann Coulter every other day, plus whatever the local PD tells them. They just fired the last local reporter. We can fix this if journalists pretend to be opinionless."

— Allison Hantschel Has Always Lived In The Castle (@Athenae) October 21, 2018

Commercial journalism was never really great to begin with, of course. But as its practitioners experienced the same erosion of wages, benefits, and job security Americans have been subjected to as steadily worsening rates since the 1970s, they elected to tell that story as though it were a special circumstance unique to them.

Which is how we end up with confused narratives about the wonders of "disruption" which we only realized too late would turn out to be horrors.

It is only now, a decade after the financial crisis, that the American public seems to appreciate that what we thought was disruption worked more like extraction—of our data, our attention, our time, our creativity, our content, our DNA, our homes, our cities, our relationships. The tech visionaries’ predictions did not usher us into the future, but rather a future where they are kings.

They promised the open web, we got walled gardens. They promised individual liberty, then broke democracy—and now they’ve appointed themselves the right men to fix it.

But did the digital revolution have to end in an oligopoly? In our fog of resentment, three recent books argue that the current state of rising inequality was not a technological inevitability. Rather the narrative of disruption duped us into thinking this was a new kind of capitalism. The authors argue that tech companies conquered the world not with software, but via the usual route to power: ducking regulation, squeezing workers, strangling competitors, consolidating power, raising rents, and riding the wave of an economic shift already well underway.

It looks like the books reviewed in that article are pretty interesting.  But it's also absurd to pretend nobody saw any of this coming.  But if we do not pretend then we have to grapple with the fundamental problem of a media industry dominated by billionaires and mega-conglomerates. We're not going to do that so instead we're going to kick you off the internet. That'll fix everything for sure. 

I do not want to be NOLA.com's "friend" Oh and also here's some football

It only took us two weeks to reach the first crisis point of this football season. No, Drew Brees's arm hasn't fallen off, Tom Benson hasn't backed out of his contract, and as far as we can tell, Jeremy Shockey is maintaining a safe hydration level. The Saints look a little beat up in the backfield this week but all in all they seem to be doing okay. The crisis we're dealing with is actually an off-the-field issue. The new NOLA.com is screwing with our football blogging.

Over the weekend, New Orleans' most visited (and most universally reviled) website began rolling out an "upgrade" which seems bent on making an already confusing site more convoluted. NOLA.com is the online partner of the Times-Picayune which supplies it with news content and its basic reason for being. The site then takes this content and makes it as difficult as possible for users to access and navigate. Some articles are posted oddly late in the publishing cycle while others seem not to make it online at all. The search function is virtually useless.

Worse still, the site appears to be edited in such a way as to intentionally cultivate the bilious idiocy which frequently bubbles up in its much-criticized comments section. The problem isn't so much the site's poor moderation. I'm generally in favor of stupid or mean people being allowed to say stupid or mean things. But at NOLA.com the stupid and mean seem to be the target audience. I don't know what NOLA.com's actual business strategy looks like but my guess is that they're going after a niche audience similar to what most AM talk radio stations have owned for some time now. The highlighted headlines and photos tend to emphasize either sensational stories from the paper's crime reports or national political stories with a heavy red meat appeal to conservative commenters looking to tee off. It's a ready-made template for building an audience to sell to advertisers but it doesn't make for the most constructive or thoughtful online community and it certainly doesn't make it easy to access the paper's content.

Instead of addressing any of these issues, the NOLA.com "upgrade" adds a new dimension of unnecessary crap to the already impenetrable wall that exists between its readers and the news content they visit the site for in the first place. The new NOLA.com asks users to create profiles where they are encouraged to provide personal information, "recommend" stories, share photos and videos, and "follow" other users via their "dashboard".

Now you may be tempted to ask yourself, why do we need this at all if we already have Facebook? But I don't think that's quite the point. For one thing, I'd much rather ask why do we need Facebook when we already have the internet, but that's a question for another time. At the very least, though, it's worth asking why the local paper needs access to its online content unnecessarily impeded by yet another superfluous layer of "friends" "followers" and "funwalls". But above all else, the NOLA.com upgrade presented us with a crisis this week because, for 72 hours, we were unable to access and thus steal their Saints photos for use on our blog.

Saints vs. Eagles (game photos shamelessly hotlinked directly to the crappy new NOLA.com site)


• Right off the bat I think we need to acknowledge that the Saints were pretty lucky to win this one. Fans are talking this week about the play of the quarterback and the apparently lopsided score but the fact of the matter is this game was decided by a series of lucky breaks at the beginning of the third quarter. Ellis Hobbs' fumble of the second half kickoff set up the Saints' third touchdown of the game and gave them a comfortable lead. When Kevin Kolb turned the ball over on the Eagles' very next possession, it was obviously going to be difficult for Philly to overcome that.
  
  But they very well could have had a few other balls bounced their way. It's not difficult to see exactly where this whole game could have gone another direction. During the second quarter, with the score tied at 10, Jeremy Shockey jumped on a Drew Brees fumble at the Saints' 30. Had he not done so, the whole game could have gone another direction. Late in the third quarter, the Eagles had just pulled to within 14 points and could have generated some momentum had an apparent fumble by Heath Evans at the New Orleans 27 not been reversed by replay. If the ruling on the field had been upheld, the whole game could have gone another direction.
  
  So there you have two lucky breaks that made a huge difference for the Saints and two that could have made a huge difference for the Eagles but didn't. And therein lies your football game. Leaving the disastrous start of the third quarter aside, the Eagles played either as well as or better than the Saints for most of the day.
  
  
  Coach Soupy protests the official's ruling of Evans' fumble on the grounds that it isn't anywhere in his laminated copy of the script.



• Just as they did in Week 1, the Saints continue to surrender game-changing big plays to the opposition. The Eagles' first touchdown came via a 71 yard pass from Kolb to DeSean Jackson. The play looked at first like a blown coverage but after watching a few replays I think the Saints just got out-schemed in a situation where they left Roman Harper responsible for both the short middle and deep corner of the field.
  
  The Eagles' second touchdown was set up by a 63 yard kick return by Ellis Hobbs. The Saints' kick coverage has been atrocious during these first two games. This is a shame because it diminishes the contribution of an emerging star in rookie punter Thomas Morstead. Morstead continues to boom most of his kickoffs into the endzone. Morstead's 60 yard kick with less than two minutes to play in the first half pinned the Eagles deep in their own territory and set the stage for the Saints'go-ahead touchdown with 43 seconds left in the half. One could argue that Morstead won the game for the Saints right there.
  
  Thomas Morstead (Not pictured. Dammit, NOLA.com!) 2009 Saints Most Valuable Player candidate



• One good thing about road games is that they can be viewed from the comfort of one's own living room. It's not that we don't like going to the Superdome it's just that there are certain advantages to nursing your Sunday morning hangover on the couch as opposed to against the wall in Section 617. Key among these advantages is the ability to call people on the telephone and ask them bring you pizza. This week we opted (against our better instincts) to order our lunch from Naked Pizza.
  
  If you're in New Orleans and you use the Tweeter Tube at all, chances are you've already heard of this outfit. They're a prime example of this city's supposedly rising Twitterpreneurial class.* Meaning they use social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook, and, I guess, now NOLA.com to turn our personal communications and relationships into the commercial marketing vectors dystopian science-fiction always told us they could be. There really is no room for the unspoiled individual in our society anymore.
  
  The Twitterpreneurial business model functions through a complicated bit of alchemy which, I am given to understand, converts "friends" into "buzz" and buzz into some kind of virus, I think. But eventually it all turns into money somehow. I know it's weird but if you're interested, Tulane will soon be offering a degree in this stuff. It's what they do now instead of civil engineering.
  
  If you're a non-degreed layperson looking to spot Twitterrpeneurs on the street just stick to the regular hipster hangouts and listen for anyone using the words diverse, capital, mash-up, tweet, creative, investor, and innovative in any order that seems to defy the usual rules of comprehensible speech. A Twitterpreneurial business is often identified by the inordinate amount of Earth-humping faux-hippiespeak that appears in its advertising. Naked Pizza, for example, is an overtly "Green-conscious" pizza parlor as its blog (of course, there's a fucking blog) attests,

  As an industry, fast food is punctuated by a history of successes and achievement, but also plagued by paradoxes, shortcomings, and challenges that require increasing acts of marketing desperation. These desperate acts often result in short-cuts and compromises that have, and will continue to, undermine the health of the very customers the industry depends on. We are fast approaching the day when the current, dominant business model in the fast food industry of “you give me money, I give you taco” will be replaced by one of equity and the realization that the business of food is interlinked with social, cultural, environmental, political, and economic disciplines.

  
  
  Good Christ I hope not. When I am hungover in my living room and Jeremey Shockey is on my teevee, I am in no mood to ponder the interlinkage between "equity" and tacos for the sake of your "business of food". Howsabout you give me the pizza, I give you the money, and you get the fuck out of my face you phony hipster fuck.
  
  What was I talking about? Oh yeah the pizza. Actually it ain't bad. We ordered a "Mediterranean" style pizza which came with feta, sun dried tomato, olives, and artichokes. All of these toppings were fresh and generously portioned. The sauce had a rich, dark, garlicky spice to it which I liked a lot. The "glutten-free, multi-grain, prebiotic, probiotic" crust was unusual but not intolerable. Taste-wise it isn't a comparable analog to real pizza crust which we tend to like sweet and slightly burnt. This was noticeably more bready and grainy. Not bad just not... pizza, I guess.



• Unusual numbers: Scott Shanle 2 Interceptions in 2 games. Heath Evans 2 Touchdown receptions in 2 games. Evans scored this week by performing a one-legged half pirouette along the sideline before plunging the ball over the goal line. It's a move we'd like to describe as graceful but we're not sure we're allowed to say that about a fullback.
  
  
  Overheard at "The Linc": That's a unicorn, right? No it's Scott Shanle with the football. No way, that's just ridiculous.



• Mike Bell left the game during the second half with a sprained knee. Because we did not trust the Fox announcers to update his status in a timely fashion, we "turned down the sound on our TV and turned up Saints radio" as per what WWL's marketing department has chosen to label a "tradition".
  
  While Bell was out, the Saints found their offense forced to scrimmage from their own three yard line. On three consecutive plays, Reggie Bush demonstrated his unwillingness to give up his tentative backward stutter-stepping running style even in the shadow of his own goal line. Bush hesitated and danced for 0, 1, and -2 yards. (The third down play should have been ruled a safety as Bush was tackled in the endzone but NFL officials have a strange aversion to making that call and will invent any excuse not to.) Hokie Gajan described Bush's style as "fiddle-fartin' around back there". We're grateful for Hokie's contribution of this colorful phrase because, frankly, we've grown tired trying to describe Reggie Bush's brand of non-football week after week. If you're looking for one characteristic of this year's Saints which distinguishes them from last year's it has to be Bell's determined, hard charging running style. If he misses a significant amount of time it will be a while before you see another 40 point performance from this offense.
  
  
  Oh fiddle-farts, this can't happen. Hey does anyone still have Deuce McAllister's number in his cell phone?



• It's also hard to overstate the impact Darren Sharper has made in the Saints' secondary. Late in the game, Sharper returned an interception 97 yards for a meaningless but fun touchdown. Anyone who was tuned in to the WWL broadcast at that time knows that when I say fun here I mean fun in a disturbed, embarrassed-for-someone but still fascinated sort of way. Jim Henderson's call of that play was... look just click here and listen to it yourself. Did that really happen? Should that really happen? Ever? What are the chances that it might happen again this season?
  
  
  Yeah, "He gone" alright. You so crazy, Jim



• Quote of the week: "That brace is kind of big" Pierre Thomas describing the status of his sprained knee. If Bell can't go this week, Frenchy will need to be ready to play in his stead. Frenchy sounds less than confident here. I'd like to point you to the NOLA.com article I culled this quote from but I didn't save the link when I noted it and it's nigh impossible to search for anything on freaking NOLA.com

What would Pete Rose do? So we're looking ahead at the schedule and we see Buffalo, New York Jets, a bye, and then the New York Giants on Monday Night. (It's the Empire State trifecta) The good news here is that even if the Saints lose their next two games, 2-2 going into the bye week really isn't that bad. We thought this looked like an 8-8 or 9-7 team going in so we'd feel pretty good about 2-2. The bad news is there is no way in hell the Saints are going to win that Giants game. 2-2 isn't bad but 2-3 makes us all a little frowny so, on second thought, it might be a good idea to try and finagle a win out of one of these next two. And that's where the really bad news come in.

Despite the fact that their quarterback is a rookie from USC, the Jets look like this year's breakthrough team to me. The problem is, a "breakthrough team" can't be 2-2 after four games. The Jets are 2-0 now. This weekend they play Tennessee. Tennessee is too good to go 0-3 so the Jets are likely to play the Saints at 2-1. But the Jets can't go 2-2 ergo the Saints just aren't going to beat the Jets. So the key is the Buffalo game.

But that's also trouble. I mean, look at this Bills team. They barely lost to New England in Week 1 on a stupid fluke of a play and are fresh off of kicking the crap out of Tampa in Week 2. Some guy named Fred Jackson has 337 all-purpose yards so far (including 165 on the ground vs Tampa) and we haven't seen enough of this Saints defense for that not to be a concern. Lee Evans and Terrell Owens are still big-play threats and we have seen enough of this Saints defense for that to be a concern. Plus something about this feels like what college football fans call a "trap game." It's the key to Saints keeping their heads above water over the next three games and even that looks like a long shot.

Still if the Saints manage to win 1 out of the next 3 they're a game over .500 which puts them right on course to end up where we thought they would. So it's nothing to worry about. Here's where it gets weird. You see, while I'm (optimistically, mind you) trying to convince myself that the Saints could possibly win one of these next three games, Dambala is certain they'll get two. And so now we have a wager. Which puts me in the uncomfortable position of betting against my own team. For a minute there I was unhappy with this because I thought it made me look too much like Pete Rose. Happily, the Zomb has disabused me of this notion.

no way Pete never bet against his own team...you're much worse than Pete.

That, I think I can live with.


*The term "Twitterpreneur" is not actually of my own coinage. Unfortunately, at press time, I was unable to recall exactly where I saw it first.

Kicking you off the internet

Cox thinks maybe you guys are being a little too online AF nowadays.

Cox Communications is going to set data caps on Louisiana home internet usage in July, and the small number of customers the company says are the heaviest users of streaming video and music will have to pay more.

Beginning July 6, most Cox customers in south Louisiana will have a data plan that allows them to upload or download 1 terabyte of data. That's enough to watch 140 HD movies, 150 hours of standard definition television, 1,500 short web videos, surf the internet for 3,000 hours and listen to 30,000 songs. Customers who have Cox G1GABLAST service will be capped at 2 terabytes. Those who go past the cap will be charged $10 for each additional 50 gigabytes of data used.

Here is where they finally break the promise of net neutrality. If you can only afford to use X amount of internet, and if all the big media conglomerates want to deliver their TV and movies to you via the internet, then you probably can't afford to spend much data allowance viewing or creating independent content. You probably can't afford to use the internet for connecting with peers. Eventually big media crowds everybody out.

Kicking you off the internet

How it works

But supporters of Net neutrality caution this is a very slippery slope. And they argue that these new business models will likely increase costs for companies operating on the Internet, and that eventually those costs will be passed onto consumers. What's more, erecting priority status for services online will result in bigger players being able to afford to pay the fees, while smaller upstarts will be blocked from competing because they won't be able to afford the fees that a Verizon or Time Warner Cable might impose.

Harvey Anderson, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for Mozilla, said the court's decision is alarming for Internet users because it will also provide broadband operators the legal ability to block any service they choose, which will undermine the once "free and unbiased Internet."

If you're not a "bigger player" who can afford the new pay to play system, you don't get to be involved anymore.

If you like what NOLA.com backed by its parent company Advance Publications presents you with, you should be pretty happy where this is going.  If you also like the diverse opinion and reporting you find from the wide variety of non-profit news organizations or independent bloggers you currently enjoy, you're probably going have to get used to a good deal less of that.

I've been around

It was in mid-June that the odds-on candidate for Man of the Year 2023 emerged in New Orleans. 

A popular chef reported missing in New Orleans over the weekend has been found alive after his family told local media he was dead, according to multiple reports.

Family of Demietriek Scott, who goes by "Chef Scott," reported the cook missing on Saturday, New Orleans Police Department confirmed to USA TODAY.

His family later told multiple outlets including WWL his body had been found on the side of a bridge in the city's Ninth Ward on Monday morning.

But on Monday night, New Orleans media reported Scott, 47, had been found alive and well.

“I’ve been around,” Scott told WVUE after he showed up at his family’s home late Monday afternoon. “I essentially just needed some time for myself.”

There's not a man, woman, or non-binary person in the city who couldn't relate to that in some way. We're around. We aren't sure if we want to be around anymore. But what else can we be?  

Despite keeping quiet on this website all summer so far, I am still here, me.  And it's time, once again, for me to try and get some notes in real quick about the things that have been happening before I forget them.  I keep making the joke about wanting to quit tossing everything into the Twitter memory hole. But each time the world's dumbest man gets a step closer to erasing everything I've tossed there forever, it gets less funny. 

It's worrisome to see what's happening to social media. But it's only one manifestation of a larger crisis in media and the internet that has been developing for a very long time. We see aspects of it reflected in the SAG-AFTRA strike over the question of who owns the right to profit from creative labor, in the proliferation of pyramid schemes like cryptocurrency and NFTs, and in the ongoing effort to impose stricter and more invasive censorship and surveillance on the population at large. S uffice to say, it's been a long time coming. We here at the Yellow Blog have been following the "kicking you off the internet" beat for many years. Recently, Cory Doctorow has coined a term that captures well the thing we've all been feeling. 

The pathology that I think that Musk is enacting in high speed is something I call “enshitification.” Enshitification is a specific form of monopoly decay that is endemic to digital platforms. And the platform is the canonical form of the digital firm. It’s like a pure rentier intermediary business where the firm has a set of users or buyers and it has a set of business customers or sellers, and it intermediates between them. And it does so in a low competition environment where antitrust law or competition laws are not vigorously enforced.

To the extent that it has access to things like capital, it can leverage its resources to buy potential competitors or use predatory pricing to remove potential competitors from the market. Think about Uber losing forty cents on the dollar for thirteen years to just eliminate yellow cabs and starve public transit investment by making it seem like there’s a viable alternative in rideshare vehicles. And we see predatory pricing and predatory acquisition in many, many, many domains.

This is the basic template for how everyone in charge of everything behaves now. Enshittification is what happens when everything in life comes down to someone with massively more amounts of power and money than you have actively making choices that put you in danger and/or rip you off.  And it's pretty much how we live now.

 

Anyway, all of this is to say that I need to post more things here in short form so I can look them up when I need them. Because tweeting them into space seems like a really weak bet for that. But I also need to get caught up a little bit. So, what follows is a small selection unrelated items I bookmarked over the past few months. It's not everything I need to save from the void. It's probably not even the most important stuff. It's just what I need to clear out in order to fire this thing up again. So bear with me a bit. 

The Ultimate Move for City Hall: From Duncan Plaza to... Duncan Plaza

I don't know if this is a function of the diminished capacity of local news reporting (support your local indie outlets while you still have them!) But it does seem kind of amazing that the state and city can hold months of negotiations over critical parcels of land downtown and the public doesn't hear about it until the day before the legislature takes up a bill to move it forward.  

Under the mayor’s plan, the state would give the city its share of Duncan Plaza and the Heal parking garage at the back end of the plaza.

In exchange, the state would receive the land under the courthouse at the corner of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, as well as two city streets that run alongside the Caesars Superdome and the green space along West Stadium Drive.

There are a ton of tricky points of contention between the city and state that threatened to (and still could) undermine the deal. But they did manage to get by the first legislative hurdle (mostly by just removing the points of disagreement from the law they had to pass.) So there's still a long way to go and we'll see what happens. 

One thing to keep an eye on will be the fate of the public space in the plaza itself. Recall in 2017 the city announced big plans to turn the park over to the DDD for a major renovation. But the goal seemed to lean toward limiting public space in favor of monetization.  Which would be a shame for reasons that then-DDD director Kurt Weigle acknowledged. 

Hundreds of homeless people took up residence in Duncan Plaza for a couple of years after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, given its proximity to City Hall, it has been a popular site for protests and rallies. That’s been particularly true in recent months, and the park has become a popular starting or end point for marches protesting various policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Weigle said the DDD will not try to curtail that part of the park’s use.

“It’s fair to say that this agreement would not be in place if we had not made a commitment to continue to support that kind of activity in the park,” Weigle said.

“Being someone who loves that part of what it means to be an American, I’d never look to curtail that in any way,” he added. “It’s something we’re looking to celebrate along with all the other uses in the park.”

It's anybody's guess at how sincere Weigle was about any of that. It's a moot question since he's long gone now. Also city officials have been especially hostile toward the homeless as of late which could inform the park design as well.

Gordan Plaza residents suffer one more indignity

It almost seems intentional. 

One of the first buyouts of a home in Gordon Plaza, a largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump, netted a $250,000 profit for the owner, who purchased it in late 2021 as a mass buyout and relocation of the subdivision’s residents was being discussed at City Hall.

The Dorsey family had lived at the ranch house on Gordon Plaza Drive since it was built in 1982. They’ve lost multiple family members to cancers they believe can be linked to living on what is now a Superfund site.

But the Dorseys sold the property 18 months ago for $55,000 to Treme daycare operator Lizzell Brooks-Williams, who owns several other New Orleans properties.

It really seems like this is something that could have been avoided in the process of designing the eligibility requirements of the buyout program. Unless, of course, they didn't want to avoid this scenario. Because it just really really seems like they didn't. 

A New Orleans truck driver who wanted to get into the real-estate business by starting with something cheap.

An air conditioning and heating company owner who lives in Atlanta.

A retired police officer who paid fire-sale prices for three deteriorating homes, which remain blighted but are now valued at $475,000.

All are among those now benefiting from the city of New Orleans’ $35 million plan to buy out owners of Gordon Plaza, the largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump.

One SWB scandal just flows right into the next

A 2021 WWLTV investigation exposed a wide range of irregularities and self dealing at the Sewerage and Water Board. The facet of that story that drew the most attention from law enforcement turned out to be permits officers with side gigs as contractors. The facet that most interested us was that the records of all of this were kept by, well, not the most modern of systems. 

A lot of this has been kept under wraps by the Sewerage and Water Board’s antiquated plumbing permitting system. The board told WWL-TV that no computerized database of plumbing permits and inspections exists, not even an index. The station has fought for over a year just to be able to see the room where permits are kept and maintained by Arnold and his staff during work hours.

The Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors sent a scathing letter to the Sewerage and Water Board in January, blasting it for being “obstructionist” to the licensing board’s efforts to root out contractor and permitting fraud.

Arnold’s permitting office “operates on what can only be described as index cards, file cabinets and such, (and) it makes it almost impossible to for state investigators, or the public, to find information on projects,” the letter said.

Those filing cabinets and index cards were confiscated by the FBI shortly after the story aired. Jay Arnold, the main target of the investigation, pleaded guilty last month. But the problems were more systemic than just one guy's actions. As of May, McBride was skeptical that any of that had been fixed. 

Other problems going un-fixed this summer: 

New Orleans entered its fourth week of sending untreated sewage into the Mississippi River on Saturday as the Sewerage & Water Board struggles to fix a 60-year-old underground pipe in the St. Roch area.

The agency had expected to complete the job this week but said Friday that workers found an additional leak at the bottom of the force main, at the pumping station at 2800 Florida Ave. They'll keep digging to repair it.

In a tweet last week (that I cannot embed because of stupid Elon) McBride noted that the amount of raw sewage being dumped into the river is "basically all of the sewage from north of I-610," or 97 million gallons per day.

On the other hand, SWB did manage to shut some things down.  For example, it appears that the employee lounge is losing some of its frills.  

Sewerage & Water Board employees have complained to management about a host of other issues in the division in recent years, including allegations of favoritism, retaliation, unsafe working conditions and unchecked harassment. 

In 2022, a filter gallery employee filed a public whistleblower complaint that accused managers of using taxpayer dollars to build a “secret room” inside the Carrollton plant where a select number of employees would bring people to sleep with both on and off their shift.

Verite interviewed two current employees and one former worker from the Carrollton Plant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In their interviews with Verite, they confirmed the existence of what one employee described as a “secret sex room.” One employee provided a video of it, showing couches, a refrigerator, a microwave, a TV and a shelf full of framed photos of nude women.

Naturally, the "secret sex room" got everyone's imaginations going.  We'll likely see the unfortunate results of that next Carnival season.  It may not be as salacious as what "one employee" implies, though.  I mean it's not too hard to believe that a critical piece of infrastructure requiring a 24 hour labor force and which may also require workers to make themselves available during emergencies, might induce those workers to improvise a makeshift sleeping quarters on site. Now, such a space *might* be used inappropriately. But outside of one person's vague statements, we don't actually know that it was. In any case, it shouldn't surprise anyone that such a room exists.. or did anyway until this story (which is actually about many more credible allegations of payroll fraud) showed up.  Besides, from the looks of the video shared on TwiXter, the now shuttered "sex room" has nothing on the $60,000 office Cedric Grant installed when he was there.

Anyway congratulations to SWB are in order on one point. It's been a mostly street flooding free summer thus far. Who would have guessed that the one trick to getting that to happen would be record drought conditions.

Various other things are broken

In addition to the big leaky sewer pipe this summer, residents should also be wary of malfunctioning air conditioners threatening to shut down various city offices at random times, including NOPD headquarters.  

The city's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, Joe Threat, said Tuesday that the Department of Property Management has struggled to develop new contracts after an Inspector General report in 2021 found that the Department of Property Management had improperly utilized an expedited contractor approval process for non-emergency situations. 

Mohan said that attempts at emergency measures were also hamstrung by city payment issues. He had deployed 45 temporary AC units within the last month, he said.

When he tried to order another 45, he said that the supplier put a credit hold on the city because of outstanding invoices from other city departments.

Councilmembers expressed dismay, but not surprise.

"Dismay, but not surprise," is, by all rights, the city motto at this point. 

Also, watch out for falling trees. 

Cantrell's revelation that a tree inspection was conducted shortly before the accident came a day after attorney Morris Bart, who is representing the injured teen and his family, said the city was "grossly negligent" for not roping off the area after the limb fell in June.

In a text message Wednesday, Bart, who is preparing a lawsuit against the city, said that photos of the tree after the first limb failure showed obvious warning signs.

“The hole left after the limb fell clearly shows rot and damage to the tree,” said Bart, who noted Tuesday that he had hired a forensic arborist for the case.

Who knew you could even hire a "forensic arborist"? I guess that's why Morris Bart gets the big bucks. 

I'm sorry. That's Special Assistant To the District Attorney, Morris Bart now.  Gotta remember that. 

Oh and speaking of District Attorneys.. or DAs that could have been

Keva Landrum, who lost to Jason Williams in 2020, has been in sitting in limbo awaiting an appointment to the post of US Attorney for the Eastern District in Louisiana. But that expected call hadn't yet come as of this July. So she's removed herself from consideration. 

“I just made the decision on my own, based on the length of time it has taken, and no real timeframe,” she said. “I decided that for me it’s best to pursue other opportunities.”

Landrum, 50, declined to say what those opportunities might be. She has been out of public office since 2020, when she left the bench after a dozen years to run for district attorney, a race she lost to then-City Councilman Jason Williams.

She said she was unaware of who might replace her as the nominee in waiting.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the lone Democrat in Louisiana’s congressional delegation, said Friday that he understood Landrum “has withdrawn from consideration because of the inordinate time that the process has taken.”

It’s unclear what sank her chances, but the sources familiar with the process said that Landrum had drawn fierce opposition from some progressive groups.

Wait a minute. Look "progressive groups" could certainly find numerous reasons to rightfully oppose this nomination. And maybe they did that. But I thought it was pretty clear the matter holding things up was Landrum's ties to a political corruption scandal that would fall under the office's jurisdiction. 

Peterson was an early endorser of Landrum during her 2020 run for Orleans Parish district attorney.

Landrum, in turn, hired Peterson’s husband, Dana, to help run her campaign. She paid the Petersons’ consultancy, College Hill Strategy Group LLC, $130,590 over three months. It is not clear how much of that was profit: Landrum's campaign expense reports say that much of the money went to cover the cost of mailers, postage and other items. Karen Carter Peterson reported income of $513,772 for 2020 on a federal disclosure form when she ran for Congress last year.

Landrum lost the district attorney race to Jason Williams.

See? It was in the paper. Sometimes I wonder if the paper reads the stuff in the paper.  Which, again, is why I need to get back to keeping notes. 

Various other scoundrels on the loose

The freaking "Night Mayor" has been making friends on the streets and online recently. Actually, I'll save this for later but suffice to say the city's selective enforcement regime continues to nickel and dime struggling residents while cutting favors for landlords and bosses.  In the meantime, read this. 

There are other potential ethical concerns behind Kaplan’s appointment as well. In October 2021, Kaplan formed a political action committee (PAC) called the “New Orleans Cultural Economy & Nightlife PAC,” which donated $5,000—the maximum allowable amount under campaign finance laws—to Cantrell’s reelection campaign. After Cantrell won, she created the Office of Nighttime Economy and appointed Kaplan as its director.

Irvin Mayfield was convicted for a fraud in which he diverted non-profit funds intended to support the library toward his own recording studio project. He is making restitution for that now by... overseeing the use of public and non-profit funds intended to support NORD toward his own recording studio project. 

Ron Forman is about to get (maybe? The mayor won't say for sure) $15 million in (additional.. he already has about $11 million) public funds to build yet more limited-access tourist forward privatized public space on the riverfront. The plan also involves a scheme to build a big parking garage that Ron can split the revenue from with the other thieves at the French Market Corp. 

Other stuff upcoming

Like I said, this is all just backlog. I felt like I needed to get all this down somewhere before the interesting part of the year got rolling in earnest.  We're right on the cusp.  Soon we'll know if the mayor can pick a police chief. Soon it will be Prime Hurricane Season. Soon it will be Municipal Budget Season. Soon it will be football season.  

Oh and the statewide elections are about to get rolling. Qualifying is next week! 

And this is why I would like to remind everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious car fires. They tend to happen around this time. I have been trying to keep track over the course of many years. I think this is the most recent post to look back at it. 

And now we have another to throw on the pile.

That's one week ago in our neighborhood.We actually heard it go off at about 3am. I don't know the whole story. As far a I can tell, it never made the news, which is weird because often these things do. But maybe in the context of so many things falling down or breaking apart this summer, it's just not surprising anymore. Dismaying, perhaps. But not surprising.

Kicking you off the internet

I've been saying this forever now but the time is fast approaching when our legal and corporate infrastructure will have figured out how to compensate for the once-leveling power of the internet and reassert the principle that free speech only belongs to those with the money to back it up. 

As the U.S. Senate continues to debate a national law to protect journalists from protecting their sources, two Senators believe unpaid bloggers and websites like WikiLeaks shouldn’t get extended First Amendment protections.

First Amendment in the Bill Of Rights

The Senate Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 would establish a national “shield law” that would give journalists protection from testifying in situations when investigators want the sources of confidential information used in media reports.

However, in today’s world, the definition of the word “journalist” means different things to different people, and two powerful Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin, say journalists only should enjoy extended First Amendment protection if they work for traditional media outlets on a paid basis.

The state decides who is legitimate media. And legitimate media happens to be defined as employees of establishment organizations with traditional revenue streams.  What could possibly be wrong with that?

The First Amendment was written, in part, to eliminate the kind of official press that parrots only the King’s sanctioned views. But with its revised “News Media Policies,” DOJ gets us closer to having just that, an official press.

That’s because all the changes laid out in the new policy (some of which are good, some of which are obviously flawed) apply only to “members of the news media.” They repeat over and over and over and over, “news media.” I’m not sure they once utter the word “journalist” or “reporter.” And according to DOJ’s Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide, a whole slew of journalists are not included in their definition of “news media.”

Oh well, at least the conversation will stay nice and "civil" the way John Georges likes it. No more "dangerous people" to worry about.
 
But nobody gives a shit about this stuff anymore. Somewhere along the way we decided the internet was mostly going to be for streaming movies.  Which is why the matter is lost... just like it was always going to be.

Kicking you off the internet

When we look back at where the most lasting damage was done by the Trump Presidency it's going to be everything going on at the EPA and this.

Federal regulators unveiled a plan Tuesday that would give Internet providers broad powers to determine what websites and online services their customers can see and use, and at what cost.

The move sets the stage for a crucial vote next month at the Federal Communications Commission that could reshape the entire digital ecosystem. The FCC’s Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, has made undoing the government's net neutrality rules one of his top priorities, and Tuesday's move hands a win to broadband companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Pai is taking aim at regulations that were approved two years ago under a Democratic presidency and that sought to make sure all Internet content, whether from big or small companies, would be treated equally by Internet providers.

It was always going to happen sooner or later.   The internet is simply following the same pattern of previous mass media toward more centralized and less democratic control. It's what capitalism does.  You'll see some false moralizing from #Resistance types for a while but they'll never overturn this. Eventually we all belong to Verizon.

Pay to play is here

Kicking you off the internet

While the dispute between content delivery networks may appear relatively minor to some, it is actually indicative of a broader fight over the free and open Internet. The brewing dispute between cable providers and Netflix, along with many bandwidth intensive services, is leading to a “Balkanization” of the Internet, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Corporations like Apple, Facebook and Comcast could force greater separation between the open Internet and so-called “walled gardens” where private networks operate based upon their own set of rules and away from the prying eyes of search engines.

But that’s just the beginning: governments, Brin said, are looking to put down popular uprisings driven by widespread Internet access, and they’re becoming increasingly successful at “put[ting] the genie back in the bottle.” Much like China, Iran and, increasingly, the U.S., other countries are also looking at harsh domestic Internet regulations, and even radical “solutions” like national networks that only connect to certain websites or services.

“I am more worried than I have been in the past,” Brin said. “It’s scary.”

Which of these games is really "The Biggest Game in History" OR An "Inconceivable" Comeback

Before we get started here, we'd like to take a moment to welcome Rob Couhig into the 2009 Mayor's race. For those of you still keeping up with your Race to the Punchline (TM: WCBF) scorecard, Couhig became the 7th personality to officially declare a candidacy last week.

Since the last time he ran for Mayor, the local lawyer, businessman, and talk radio blowhard has kept himself sort of busy and very much in the public eye. After failing to make the 2006 runoff, Couhig ("strategically") endorsed eventual winner Ray Nagin. For his endorsement, Couhig was awarded an opportunity to help New Orleans count to 100 and a seat on the board of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. But since then, Couhig has discovered a growing sense of "disappointment" with this second Nagin administration he recommended and has taken to expressing this more and more frequently in his capacity as a media personality. And so, after a period of vacillation in which he was the undeclared prince of the forums, Couhig the candidate has once again emerged from the realm of the "inconceivable". At least until he figures out how to leverage another strategic endorsement.

Of particular interest to us regarding Couhig's entry into a campaign which runs concurrently with the meaty part of the undefeated Saints' season is now we have two candidates with direct ties to an issue that has already affected the team's on field performance; although we aren't sure if it's been for better or for worse. Allow us to explain.

This past summer we learned that ex-Saints long snapper Kevin Houser had involved himself and various other Saints players and coaches in a shaky tax credit investment scheme with Wayne Read's Louisiana Film Studios. When it became clear to the investors that Read had not applied for the Louisiana "Hollywood South" tax credits they were promised when Houser collected their money, (much of it in cash, apparently) the resulting ill will led to Houser's dismissal from the team. At the Yellow Blog we came to call this incident the Uncle Rico Scandal. You can read about the details and the origin of that term here, here, and here.

One of many fun facts to emerge from Uncle Rico was that Rob Couhig is Kevin Houser's attorney. We don't know if Couhig had a hand in hooking Houser up with Read in the first place, or if Couhig was involved in buying or selling any of the tax credits. We don't even think it's likely but we do enjoy imagining something like this to be the case. We do know that he is representing Houser and his wife in the resulting litigation and that's a source of great fun for us because all season long, whenever the Saints have had difficulty with a botched snap in the kicking game, some part of us has assigned some part of the blame to Couhig.

We have yet to determine how much blame for missed field goals we can apportion to John Georges. Georges owns the building where Read told everyone he was going to make movies before the venture fell apart. But now that we have two candidates for Mayor who were involved in a goofy scandal which kinda sorta has something to do with football which, in turn, is the BIGGEST STORY IN TOWN RIGHT NOW, we're pretty geeked up about the whole thing.

Two Weeks of Saints Football: (Vs. Pats and Vs. Redskins)

• This week's media complaint: There's been so much to pick from over the past two weeks that I won't be able to fit it all in. Instead of hashing out each example of media awfulness, I'll just present you with an observation and follow it with some selected evidence.
  
  The media awfulness with regard to the 12-0 New Orleans Saints falls into two categories. 1) That which originates from national sources who make condescending and/or inaccurate statements about the city and the football team because they don't get it and are too lazy to try. 2) That which originates from local sources who make shockingly stupid and/or inaccurate statements about the city and the football team about which they should know better but are too lazy to try.
  
  Two examples of what we're talking about regarding category 1 appeared in the Boston Globe which disappointed us greatly since the Patriots fans we met last week at the Dome were some of the nicest visiting fans we've encountered. Unfortunately the New England media-folk were staggeringly stupid.
  
  
  1. Bob Ryan gets a lot of things wrong here. On the day after the Saints-Patriots game, Ryan looked at the Saints' remaining 5 games, 3 of which are against division rivals, and concludes,

     now everybody can start thinking about the Dallas game here Dec. 19 as a possible game of interest because there doesn’t appear to be anything else on their remaining schedule of any consequence.

     By assuming that games against Atlanta, Tampa and Carolina are not "of interest" around here under any circumstance, Ryan demonstrates that he clearly doesn't get it. Maybe Patriots fans aren't interested when the Jets come to Foxboro... or the Pats go to Miami. Wait. Scratch that second one. I meant maybe the team isn't interested when the Pats go to Miami. Or maybe Ryan just doesn't think football is as well understood here as it is in more civilized regions. Watch how he subtly dismisses the enthusiasm of Saints fans as an innocent novelty,
     
     

     It would be difficult to overstate what’s going on down here with the New Orleans fans and their current adoration of this football team. You easily could think you had landed in Tuscaloosa, Gainesville, or Austin, and not an NFL town. A big sporting event - and this was considered the biggest regular-season game in Saints history - easily can get swallowed up in a major city. When it’s all said and done, not everyone is a sports fan.
     
     But it was impossible to escape the Saints, and this game, the last few days. Every other person was wearing Saints garb, and that includes just about every croupier at Harrah’s Casino, be it male, female, Caucasian, African-American, old, or young.
     
     This was, by all accounts, the toughest ticket in Saints history. People saw this game as the one that would validate all the others. It was a tremendous sign of respect for a 7-3 opponent with a shaky defense, but such is the lingering Patriots mystique throughout the National Football League.

     
     
     First of all, why does every out of town reporter go to Harrah's to get a feel for the pulse of the city? Is it any wonder that Ryan doesn't get it? Maybe it isn't like this in Boston but, in this city, people be they "male, female, Caucasian, African-American, old, or young" care about what the Saints are doing. It isn't just a "current" phenomenon. And it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the "lingering Patriots mystique". It happens all the time here. Sure it's a bit more pronounced when you're 12 and fucking 0, but why should that surprise anyone?
     
     This is the sports world manifestation of the northeastern cultural condescension people like Ryan typify. The column says, "Isn't it cute the way the natives have taken to our sport of American football. They're so naive about the proper way to appreciate it but their enthusiasm is endearing." At least that's what I pick up on when reading that column. Naturally, when Bob Ryan and his team come to town, it must be the "biggest regular-season game in team history" More on that in a minute.
  
  
  
  2. Oh but it gets worse. Here's Globe writer Chris Gasper's presntation.

     The Louisiana Superdome has proven to be a memorable venue since it first opened its doors in 1975.
     
     It’s where the 2001 Patriots proved anything is possible. It’s where Michael Jordan, then a University of North Carolina freshman, first proved he was something special. It’s where Fab Five forward Chris Webber proved he couldn’t remember how many timeouts Michigan had. It’s where Sugar Ray Leonard proved he could make Roberto Duran say, “No mas.’’
     
     The building proved its worth during Hurricane Katrina, acting as a supersized sanctuary and storm shelter.

     
     
     Um... the roof came off and people suffered in inhumane conditions and panic for five days but never mind that. We know you need a convenient prop for your football story.
  
  
  There are more like that. (Please don't ask me about the Colin Cowherd show.) To most of America, it seems, New Orleans just got started with football yesterday. And so every game is "The Biggest Game In Saints History" Those of us who grew up here know better. Or at least we should.
  
  But guess what. A staggering number of us do not know better. Before and after the Patriots game, the local news outlets (particularly WWL AM) were insisting that asking listeners if we all thought that Monday Night would be the Biggest Game In Saints History. We understand the enthusiasm, but still the proposition that a game with so little on the line for the loser strikes us as eminently absurd. The Saints could clinch no playoff berth or special advantage by winning, nor would they forfeit anything by losing. Likewise the Patriots who lost that Monday and lost their next game but are still in first place in their division were risking very little in this minor regular season football game. Yes the Saints were 10-0, and yes they were playing on Monday Night. I'm not saying it wasn't a big deal aesthetically. But there just wasn't very much riding on it.
  
  And yet Bob Delgiorno and a majority of the idiot callers he spoke with on the air all week were sure this was The Biggest Game In Saints History. It sucks that America tends to dismiss our town, its culture, and by extension its football team. It's appalling when the locals show the same lack of grasp or interest. Below I have compiled a brief and incomplete, but sufficient for our purposes list of Saints games which were more important moments in the history of the franchise than this supposed Biggest Game In Saints History.
  
  
  1. Every playoff game the Saints have participated in. These include, Vs. Minnesota in 1987, At Chicago in 1990, Vs. Atlanta in 1991, Vs. Philadelphia in 1992, Vs. St. Louis in 2000, At Minnesota in 2000, Vs. Philadelphia in 2006, and At Chicago in 2006. Each of the above is indisputably a bigger moment in the history of the franchise than The Biggest Game In Saints History of two weeks ago.
     
     And, again, those are just the playoff games. The rest of this list happened during the regular season and were still bigger than TBGISH.
  
  
  
  2. September 25, 2006 Vs. Atlanta No explanation necessary
  
  
  
  3. November 19, 1987 At Pittsburgh In their 21st year of existence, the Saints beat the Steelers to move to 8-3 thus clinching the first winning season in franchise history. (8 wins meant a winning season in the strike shortened year.) This game featured a dramatic goal-line stand by the Saints' defense which produced an iconic T-P photo of cornerback Van Jakes raising his arms in celebration. (To my great dismay, I am unable to locate this image on the internet. Saints fans of a certain age know what I'm talking about though.)
  
  
  
  4. December 18, 1983 Vs. L.A. Rams Everything that breakthrough 1987 game eventually became, this one could have been but for a 42 yard Mike Lansford field goal in the closing seconds.
  
  
  
  5. December 31, 1990 Vs. L.A. Rams The Saints clinched their second ever playoff berth in the final game of the regular season. On Monday Night. On New Year's Eve. It was electric. And it meant a hell of a lot more than "The Biggest Game In Saints History" meant.
     
  
  
  
  6. December 16, 1991 Vs. L.A. Raiders Bobby Hebert makes a dramatic return from injury on Monday Night to throw for 320 yards and help the Saints snap a 4 game losing streak setting them up to clinch their first ever division title. Leading right into...
     
  
  
  
  7. December 22, 1991 At Phoenix Saints clinch first ever division title.
     
  
  
  
  8. December 17, 2001 Vs. St. Louis A Monday Night showdown with a hated rival which the Saints lost due, in part, to some highly questionable officiating. This was the night of the infamous "bottle tossing incident" that led NFL stadiums to cease the sale of plastic beer bottles for a time and, I think, was part of the reason for the No Liquor After the 3rd Quarter rule. After this loss, the Saints didn't win another game all year in the first of two December collapses that became a hallmark of the Haslett years.
     
     
     When Saints fans willingly part with their Dome foam, you know it's a Big Game
     
  
  
  I could go on (I stopped compiling these when I got to 20) but I think we get the point. The Saints have been involved in big games before; bigger even than the so-called Biggest Game in Saints History. One interesting thing about the Bigger than the Biggest list I put together is that none of theminvolve the New England Patriots. Let's not tell Bob Ryan.



• This week's Dome complaint: It's become apparent to us that the heightened security at the stadium entrance has very little to do with safety or anti-terror and everything to do with preserving Tom Benson's profit from obscenely over-priced beer and alcohol sales. Superdome security personnel are searching aggressively and primarily for smuggled liquor. They stopped r from entering the Carolina game until she finished her bottle of vodka and cranberry juice. On Monday Night they almost got me. The screener deliberately and probingly grasped at my pockets until he gripped my flask. I don't believe adults deserve to be violated this way. Not by law enforcement, and certainly not by Superdome rent-a-grunts. I wonder if they know just how near they are to provoking violence each week when they accost us in this fashion. "Watchya got there?" I reached into the pocket and, with some slight of hand, produced my phone. The guy let me go.
  



• Pulling a Tebow: Maybe it wasn't The Biggest Moment In Saints History, but we have to admit we violated the Tim Tebow No Crying In Football Rule when Mike McKenzie intercepted Tom Brady in his first action since returning to the team. McKenzie (not counting his time away this year) is one of the longest tenured Saints. My wife wears his jersey number to the games. It was one of the first signs that this was going to be the Saints' night. We teared up a little. So sue us.
  
  
  Welcome home, Mike
  



• Bill Belichick- Super Genius: The Patriots' world renowned defensive guru was badly out-coached by Sean Payton on Monday Night. When the Saints had the ball, the Pats seemed to have exactly the wrong defense prepared for whatever the Saints were trying to do. Drew Brees had what SI's Kerry Byrne called the best statistical performance for any pro quarterback ever. On one play, Devery Henderson was so open, we weren't sure the Pats were playing with 11 guys on the field. We laughed at it the way one can't help but laugh at a dirty joke. You almost feel like it's not supposed to be happening. Belichick had presented us with a football obscenity that even Alex Morgan couldn't explain away. He really Jeffed this thing up, so to speak.
  
  
  Bill Belichick Super Genius
  



• Bill Belichick: Super Asshole: The Patriots are having a rough go of things at this point in their season. They've lost three out of four games including the embarrassment at New Orleans and Coach Genius isn't doing the punchiest job of handling the pressure. The trouble didn't exactly start with the loss to Indianapolis, but the way in which the Patriots lost that game is what really got things coming apart.
  
  Leading at Indy with two minutes left to play, Belichick chose to have his offense attempt to convert a 4th and 2 from its own 28 yard line. The turnover on downs set the Colts up deep in New England territory to go for the winning score. Not to get too far into this, since the controversial call has been argued back and forth for weeks now, but it struck me at the time as an amzingly defeatist and panicky sort of thing for a "genius" to do. Even if you are concerned that Peyton Manning is good enough to go 80 yards in two minutes, for God's sake, at least make him prove it. One of the Saints' most valuable weapons this season has been punter Thomas Morstead. If Payton had elected not to put him on the field in that situation, I would have been livid.
  
  But Belichick went for it and the Colts scored and thus began the digging of a hole which the Patriots' coach has insisted on making deeper ever since. It's no secret that I hate football coaches. But one thing I've been grateful for this season is Coach Soupy's rare capacity to admit and learn from his own mistakes. Coach Genius, on the other hand, is a perfect example of what happens when this ability is absent. Against the Saints, Belichick made a point of sending the offense out for thee dubious 4th down attempts. The results were mixed but the message was clear. Belichick was telling the whole world to fuck off on national TV.
  
  Not only was Belichik being pouty but also, once again, unnecessarily panicky. The final 4th down attempt came late in the third quarter on the Saints' 10 with the Pats trailing by two touchdowns. A field goal wouldn't have been the greatest thing there but with a whole quarter left to play it certainly couldn't have hurt. BTW, Mike McKenzie broke up that fourth down pass on the left sideline. He came very close to turning it into a pick-6. Would have blown the roof off the place.
  
  Then Belichick went right back to pouting. With a good five minutes left in the game, he pulled his starters. I couldn't believe it. Walking out of the Dome, I had a conversation with a couple of Patriots fans who were good enough to visit. (Turns out they had just gotten engaged as well.) They couldn't believe it either. And no one who watched the Saints' improbable victory against Washington the following week should defend such a selfish, defeatist, pouty move. And still this week, it's just getting worse.

  FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) Adalius Thomas wasted no time defending himself after coach Bill Belichick sent him home for being late to a team meeting.
  
  The New England Patriots linebacker said after returning Thursday that he was "dumbfounded" and "can't figure out what Bill thinks or knows."
  
  Three other players were sent away for showing up late on Wednesday - wide receiver Randy Moss and linebackers Gary Guyton and Derrick Burgess. All four were at practice on Thursday, but the other three declined to speak with reporters.
  
  Thomas, a starter in nine games this year, called ahead on a snowy Wednesday morning, as players are instructed to do when they're going to be late, he said. Traffic was tied up and he nearly got into an accident, he said. But when he showed up about nine minutes late for an 8 a.m. team meeting, Belichick told him to leave.
  
  That surprised him.
  
  "You're told to call and you call, you get sent home," Thomas said.
  
  "That's not an excuse," he said, but "I could have been in the ditch. They really don't give a damn, honestly. As long as you ain't in the meeting they really don't give a (expletive)."
  

  
  
  Bill Belichick doesn't give a Jeff about anything but his crappy whiny mood. I would have fired him yesterday.
  
  
  Hey check out this pouty whiny overrated asshole. Wait, can you please be more specific?
  



• Uh oh (one of ) the kicker(s) sucks: When John Carney missed one field goal and just barely banked another one in against New England, I very sorely wanted to blame Rob Couhig. (In fact, the snap was a little off on one of those kicks.) But this would mean that the next week, when Garrett Hartley was called up to hit 4 out of 5 attempts (the one miss being from 58 yards) I would have had to thank... Rob Couhig. So until further notice, we'll just assume that the problem was Carney was up past his bedtime.
  
  
  You gotta admit, though. That's good placement
  



• Saints: So very tired: Let's face it, this Saints team is beat the hell up right now. A few days after the New England game, the talk was about how an extraordinary number of Saints have scored at least one touchdown this season. (19) And then I saw that the exact same number of Saints appeared on the injured list for the Washington game. (Uh oh) The patchwork secondary that everyone expected the Patriots to exploit ended up being used by Jason Campbell of all people. The all-around defensive performance was the Saints' worst of the season. Furthermore, the team just looked tired and beat up all day. Sometimes you get really lucky. But the problem persists. This week's injury report is again 19 players long. Notably all four running backs appear to have some sort of problem. Is there any way to earn two bye weeks before the playoffs? The Saints might need to.



• Laron Landry Super Asshole: Hate to say this about a former Tiger but does Laron Landry ever shut up? Maybe it's just because Fox decided to focus on him, but it seemed half the broadcast was shots of Landry running his mouth after being involved in any play no matter how inconsequential. Too bad for him the other half of the broadcast was shots of him biting on pass routes that ended up being long touchdowns.
  
  
  And yet we're pretty sure Landry still had something to say about this



• Little remarked upon fact of the week:Here's another quirk of Sunday's Fox broadcast. We couldn't help noticing a contrast revealed in the sideline shots of each team's coaching staff. It seems every Saints coach is noticeably chunkier than every Redskins coach. What's up with that? Is Snyder not feeding them? (Probably not, actually) Anyway whatever it is, you can't argue with the results.



• Malcolm Jenkins is garbage: Earlier when we said, "The patchwork secondary that everyone expected the Patriots to exploit ended up being used by Jason Campbell of all people." What we meant to say was, wow what a total piece of crap Malcolm Jenkins turned out to be. We hope that someday he makes a decent safety because the dude absolutely can not play on the corner. Anybody got Jason David's number?



• Stat of the Week:
  Drew Brees' numbers vs Washington 35 of 49 419 yards 2 touchdowns and 1 interception (which was also a touchdown). 49 pass attempts is way too many. That's 2007 and 2008 Saints type stuff and it should have gotten the team beaten last week. The 2009 12-0 Saints run the ball as well as they pass it. This would be a bad time to forget this.



• Quote of the week:
Darren Sharper hung out with the Saints fans in the stands for a while after the game.



Saints free safety Darren Sharper was having the last laugh as he led black and gold-clad fans in a chorus of the familiar chant.

“I love the ‘Who Dat?’; I love that chant,” a beaming Sharper said after the Saints escaped with a wild 33-30 win against the Redskins. “I am the Who Dat leader.”




This is immeasurably fun on many levels. Our favorite being that we much prefer Sharper as a "Who Dat leader" to Bobby Hebert who needs to find an new job before he hurts somebody. I know he's trying to be a "character" like Buddy D was but he's far too stupid and doesn't know how to do it right. And, frankly, we're a little embarrassed both by and for him.


Darren Sharper: Who Dat Leader


• Don't be a Belichick: So with the clock ticking down inside of three minutes and the Redskins pretty much driving down the field at will, I fired off what I thought was a pretty clever text message, "So who wants to go to the airport?" I wasn't trying to be too dark. But at that point I really was thinking about where the Saints stood now that they would be 11-1. Would Minnesota move into first place in the NFC? Wouldn't it suck to clinch the division with a loss like this? And why the hell can't Sean Payton beat Washington? On the outside, I was still making jokes. But internally I really was being a bit of a Belichick there for a second.
  
  But then the amusingly named Sean Suisham lined up and sweeshed the potential kill shot to the right. Hey, at least this will be interesting again for a minute, we thought. And it was. I wonder if that would have happened had Payton removed his starters with five minutes left?
  
  
  Sweesh! We will never Belichick out on this team again.



• Uh Oh their kicker sucks: Although the above photograph suggests that the Saints got a hand on the ball, the Redskins blamed Suisham for the miss and cut him this week. I blame Rob Couhig. It is, after all, the year of the Inconceivable.
  



• Best Timeout Ever: Coach Soupy takes a lot of crap for his uncanny knack for losing replay challenges. I think we can all agree his decision to call timeout in order to give the booth a chance to review Mike Sellers' fumble in overtime pretty much makes up for all of that.
  
  
  Don't say anything, but I also think the replay official got the call wrong. Oops!



• Morstead for MVP: Remember, Bill Belichick doesn't use his punter. Meanwhile the Saints' Thomas Morstead continues to prove value far beyond the fifth round draft choice the Saints spent on him. The numbers don't always tell you the story, but we think Morstead's performance has been a crucial element of the Saints' success this season. (My #6 jersey should be here by the time we play another home game.)
  
  Against Washington, Morstead punted three times. His first pinned the Redskins back at their 6. His second hung high in the air and was not returnable. The third was very nearly the play of the day. It only went about 27 yards and, at first glance, looks like a shank. But note that the ball hit Washington's Kevin Barnes right in the back before bouncing to the ground and into the arms of Usama Young. The play ended up being about a 30 yard gain for the Saints. Having watched Morstead perform the way he has all season, it's difficult to ignore the very real possibility that he could have done that on purpose.
  
  Note also, that it was Morstead's kick that allowed the Saints to maintain possession of the ball setting up this play.
  
  
  
  Don't be a Belichick. Let the punter play. Sometimes it's the best move you can make.
  
  



• Let's just agree to disagree this time: I couldn't help but notice this pop up on NOLA.com this week.
  
  

  Saints poll: Was this the craziest game in team history?

  
  
  Jesus. Please do NOT make me start on another list.