Big Easy Babylon

Outside the oceanographic certainty that the French Quarter is destined to be part of the Gulf of Mexico sea floor sooner rather than later, the polarized racial politics of the mayoral race in a post-Katrina New Orleans betrays a bigoted Big Easy that might be too repulsive to rebuild:

Instead, with the city's majority-black status in doubt for the first time in decades, one dominant motif has emerged from the campaign: race, which for nearly 30 years has been merely a muted subtheme in politics here. Since 1978, New Orleans has elected black mayors, and there has been little doubt about the racial identity of the eventual winner.

This year, each of the three major candidates or their supporters have aligned themselves along racial lines, with each camp hoping it has singled out the correct, and as yet unknown, demographic.

In part, this is a measure of how far the office of mayor has been reduced in the seven months after the storm.

If this election has been reduced to nothing more than a census in a hole in a swamp, are the cultural remains of New Orleans really worth rebuilding?