In what I can only surmise is an example of IOKIYAR, Charlotte Allen of the Independent Women’s Forum tut-tuts at “liberal-elite puritans” for raining on the Mardi Gras parades.
Mardi Gras is the season in New Orleans for having a good time–for some people too good a time–and in my opinion, the Katrina-embattled city sure could use it. That’s the way a lot of New Orleanians think, too, so they’re out parading and dancing in the streets, although on a somewhat reduced scale. For one thing, the city’s businesses, closed for weeks and even months for Katrina cleanup, could sure use the tourist money. So who can fault them for setting aside their hardships for a few days to have a good time, show some civic pride, and hold their signature celebration?
Who can fault them? Well, our out-of-town liberal elite pundits sure can. Here’s Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, tut-tutting the New Orleanians for daring to revel when they should be home beating their breasts:
Don’t you love how she drops that “out-of-town liberal elite pundits” in there? I haven’t been able to determine where, exactly, Allen herself hails from, but she seems to be well entrenched in the elite herself, what with the Stanford and Harvard education and the writing gigs at The Atlantic Monthly, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and (gasp!) The New York Times.
I should also like to point out the delicious irony of someone who got the vapors about good conservative Americans being called puritans by a Frenchman because they were scandalized by Bill Clinton’s penis turning around and affixing the same label to a liberal who thinks the Mardi Gras parades are a waste of time and energy this year.
I expect, therefore, that Ms. Allen will be standing topless along Bourbon Street tonight, hurricane in hand, jumping up and down and yelling, “Throw me something, mister!” and hoping for pearls. I expect that instead of beating her breasts, she’ll be flashing them.
Anyway, here’s what Robinson had to say:
Down in New Orleans they’re having Mardi Gras, and I don’t know whether the rest of us are supposed to laugh or cry.
Let’s see: Vast tracts of the city are mold-infested and uninhabited, some neighborhoods are reduced to rubble, two-thirds of the population is dispersed around the country, more than a thousand people are dead, the levees around the city are patched together, in just three months or so a new hurricane season begins — and the people of New Orleans are spending precious time and energy to throw a humongous party in the streets.
Last fall, even before the devastating floodwaters had receded, the shape of this year’s post-tragedy Mardi Gras had become a matter of serious public debate, the stuff of impassioned letters to the editor. Anyone who dared suggest that maybe the city ought to think about skipping the party, just this once, was peremptorily dismissed — not just the know-nothing outsiders (like me) who couldn’t possibly understand, but also the displaced evacuees sitting in cramped apartments outside Houston or Dallas, stunned that their hometown would stage a Mardi Gras that so many of its people couldn’t possibly come home to enjoy.
Not exactly an unqualified condemnation of the party, is it? Oh, but that doesn’t stop Allen from accusing Robinson of being anti-Catholic (as well as addressing him like she would a recalcitrant three-year-old):
First, earth to Robinson: Mardi Gras, believe it or not (and sure, it can be hard to believe) has some religious significance. With its historic French population (that’s why they call it the French Quarter, Gene), New Orleans is a Catholic town, and celebrating Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, with great hijinx is a centuries-old tradition for Catholics. You let it all hang out on Mardi Gras, then you go to church on Wednesday, confess your sins (including the ones you committed on Tuesday), and then spend 40 days doing penance. Telling the Catholics of New Orleans they can’t celebrate Fat Tuesday is like telling the Muslims of New Orleans they can’t celebrate Eid, their own blowout after their fasting season of Ramadan, or like telling the Jews of New Orleans that they can’t celebrate Purim with merry parties that break mid-winter gloom.
Earth to Charlotte Allen: Robinson covered this in his column, you know:
I found this show-must-go-on consensus jarring, but I should have thought back to my time as a correspondent for The Post covering South America, specifically Brazil, and remembered how important the tradition of pre-Lenten carnival can be to a society. Carnival in Brazil is more than an officially sanctioned bacchanal, it’s like a national birthright — a guaranteed, weeklong interlude during which inhibiting rules are suspended, most societal barriers are ignored and all manner of oppressive problems are deferred.
But Allen has previously jumped on the bandwagon of accusing liberals of being anti-Catholic for, among other things, opposing the Roberts nomination. So why not ignore Robinson’s statement that, yes, he does get the significance?
Probably because it would get in the way of Allen acting all magnanimous and chiding “liberal-elite puritans” for wanting to take away the bread and circuses from the peasants:
But more important, don’t New Orleanians deserve a break? Many of them conducted themselves with courage, even heroism, in combatting the devastation of Katrina, and many of them depend for their livelihoods on the income that Mardi Gras brings them. New Orleans is a city that long before Katrina was imploding from within thanks to poor urban management and lack of economic investment; now, it’s trying desperately to rebuild and refashion itself. I applaud the brave and resourceful residents of that city for refusing to be demoralized by an appalling catastrophe, who want to pick the pieces and return to life as usual, including Mardi Gras as usual. Only the most dour of liberal-elite puritans would want to deny them this simple pleasure.
Ah, yes. Those childlike black folks with their simple pleasures. Again, Allen breezes by the parts of Robinson’s column that explain why he’s uncomfortable with this year’s Mardi Gras (as well as the whole idea of using big, lavish Mardi Gras/Carnival parades as an escape):
Of course, putting problems out of your mind doesn’t make them go away. It was while I was, ahem, “covering” carnival in Rio one year that I was able to see in starkest relief the racial and economic disparities in Brazilian society. There could have been no carnival without the multitudes of poor, black Brazilians who dressed up in fabulous, glittering costumes and danced through the streets as if tomorrow would never come — and then, at cruel sunrise on Ash Wednesday, went back to being poor, black and bereft of prospects.
At least we won’t have to worry that this year’s Mardi Gras celebration will obscure New Orleans’s awful problems of race and poverty in a hailstorm of beaded necklaces and plastic doubloons. A lot of poor, black New Orleanians won’t be able to come to the party anyway, since their homes are in ruins and they have had to make new lives for themselves in cities far away. Their absence is statement enough.
And the racial/economic divide has always been an issue with Mardi Gras and New Orleans. While Mardi Gras celebrations have been held forever all over the city for the benefit and pleasure of the residents, the big, profitable parades in the French Quarter, the ones that draw the tourists and the tourist dollars, have been run by the rich white krewes. They may feature black performers, thus giving the illusion of inclusiveness, but when the parade ends, the dollars go to the Garden District and the talent goes home to the Lower Ninth Ward. This pattern was so entrenched that it was considered revolutionary when Harry Connick, Jr. started up Orpheus several years ago — an integrated and inclusive krewe that parades through the Quarter.
Allen goes on to snark about the “usual measure of Bush-bashing” and to decry Robinson’s failure to mention Ray Nagin and the buses!:
Oh no, we can’t blame them. Instead, let’s point the finger of blame at the ordinary citizens of New Orleans who want to spend a few days having their traditional good time.
Allen really seems to have reading comprehension issues if she thinks that Robinson was “blaming” the ordinary citizens of New Orleans — for what, though, she fails to specify. Because, again, that’s not at all what Robinson was doing; in fact, he betrays some admiration for the ordinary citizens for using the media coverage of Mardi Gras to keep the world’s eye focused on the devastation:
In the end, it doesn’t matter whether we see Mardi Gras as a triumph of the human spirit or a colossal waste of time. What really matters is that we see it at all — that we look at the ruined city and remember what happened there. What matters is that we recall the promise President Bush made to rebuild New Orleans for all of its citizens and that we remind ourselves of the hundreds of thousands of people who still can’t go home. What matters is that we think back to those Third World images of poverty and despair we saw during the flood and renew our pledge never to witness such scenes again.
If it takes a party, then let the party begin.
Hat tip: Amanda.