Bringing Hope to a ravaged city and blahblah blah... bromide...fatuousness...

I've developed a weird tic in the year after the storms. (Well, honestly, probably more than one, but this is a good one, so I shall focus on it.) I'm talking to myself. But the talk is specific. At odd moments in the day, I find myself assuming a deep, resonant tone and commenting on my actions:

"And now, I shall chuck my empty Abita bottles in the recycle bin-- bringing hope to a region devastated by Hurricane Katrina." or "I am trying to find a pair of jeans that isn't noticeably dirty-- an act that is part of 'The New Normal' in post-Katrina Louisiana..." or "Cleaning the toilet-- just one more task to accomplish as the city tries to rebuild..."

I can do this because I live alone.

My point is: in the eyes of the media, anything anyone does in or for New Orleans has tremendous redemptive symbolic value. Painting a door. Picking up some trash. Doing a benefit. Making a first down. Blocking a punt (well, that one really did help, I guess...).

But I'm carrying over what I hear on TV and the radio and read in the papers to my daily activities. And I'm being drawn into the vortex of hopey cliché. (It's kind of like what I went through during the whole "...or the terrorists will have won" period after the al-Qaida attacks here: "If that waitress doesn't come back soon with my bourbon on her tray, the terrorists will have won...")

The sympathy is nice; please don't misunderstand. It's much better than neglect, or worse-- blame for living where we live and doing things the way we do them. But let's not delude ourselves, please, about the value of sympathetic words. And let's be wary of the value of symbolism. Sure, the Dome is loud, but there's a lot of rot and chaos and despair and pain in the city around it. I'll tell you what's not bringing hope to a ruined city.

It's not displaced children singing Christmas carols on the White House lawn and it's not comedians pretending to flash tits on Bourbon Street. It's not U2 and it's not Green Day. And as much as I love them, it's not the Saints (though God knows they rock).

You know what would really bring hope and joy to my benighted city?

Money. Lots and lots of cash. Investment. Public and private. We can start with the oil revenues out of which we have been shafted since the days of Huey Long.

With some cash, we can start restoring coastline. We can build levees out of something other than dust bunnies, spackle, and pudding pop sticks. We might even be able to afford our new, outrageous insurance costs and utility bills.

And while I'm pursuing this pipe dream: some leadership. Some bold thinking. Those would be nice too.