"the devil possesses here a great empire"

In A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius J. Reilly described New Orleans as the "vice capital of the civilized world," a place, he insisted, "famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Antichrists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft." (A Confederacy Of Dunces, 3)Ignatius was certainly not the first to launch such condemnations of the Crescent City. Indeed, since its early settlement, New Orleans has been characterized as a place of debauchery, vice, excess and corruption. In the late eighteenth-century, an Ursuline nun, perhaps fed up with the moral failings of her colonial abode, swore that in New Orleans, "the devil possesse[d] . . . a great empire." (Harnett T. Kane, Gone Are The Days, 119)Over a century and a half later, Jazz legend Louis Armstrong offered a softer yet striking similar description of the city. In his autobiography, My Life in New Orleans, he described the neighborhood of his youth as a place crowded with "churchpeople, gamblers, hustlers, cheap pimps, thieves, prostitutes and lots of children." The block between Gravier and Perdido Streets, he recalled, was home to "bars, honky-tonks and saloons, and lots of women walking the streets for tricks to take back to their 'pads.'" (Satchmon, My Life in New Orleans, 8)
More contemporary condemnations of New Orleans, particularly those that came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, seemed to take on a much more visceral tone that might make even the insensitive Ignatius rush to the city's defense. For example, social conservative and televangelist, Pat Robertson claimed that the "flooding of New Orleans is a sign that God is tired of seeing his creation mocked by the Mardi Gras and its perverted display of debauchery and exposed breasts." Others blamed the destruction of the city not on Mardi Gras but on another festival, Southern Decadence. Republican Representative, Dennis Hasteret argued that "it makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level," insisting that much of the city should just be "bulldozed." (August 31, 2005).
As questions concerning the value of rebuilding New Orleans mounted, residents were forced to explain their own relevancy. A city that has always prided itself on its differences, on its separateness, now had to convince the nation why New Orleans mattered.
Most champions of New Orleans acknowledged that racism, economic inequality, violence, poverty, corruption, stagnant economy, crumbling infrastructure, and failing schools had dogged the city for centuries. How could they not. National crime statistics place New Orleans higher than national averages in all but one crime category (Arson). Numerous studies also indicate that Orleans Parish has some of the lowest and slowest high school graduation rates in the nation (but Indianapolis’ rates are significantly lower than ours)! However, proponents of New Orleans argue that despite the social, political, and economic ills that plague the city, it is, at the same time, a place of elegance, beauty, and refinement. More skilled at articulating the coexistence of splendor and squalor, defenders of New Orleans look(ed) to the city’s history, its people, its geography, and its culture to explain why New Orleans is more than the sum of its worst traits.
Some articulated the uniqueness and beauty of New Orleans in its geography. Anne Rice, native New Orleanian and novelist, explained, "I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days." http://www.annerice.com/Allen Toussaint, award-winning song-writer, musician, and producer, also linked the uniqueness of the city to geography: "To get to New Orleans, you don't pass through anywhere else. That geographical location being aloof, lets it hold onto the ritual of its own pace more than other places that have to keep up with progress."http://allentoussaint.com/Pete Fountain, trumpet great, whole-heartedly attributes his success and talent to New Orleans, a place where music fills the streets.http://petefountain.com/
Journalist and long-time resident, Tom Piazzahttp://tompiazza.com agreed that despite its flaws, “New Orleans is . . . . a small model of all the best of America. You have a truly multicultural city, in which all social and ethnic and economic levels of society have somehow managed to fashion a distinct and beautiful culture out of the tensions among their differences. . . . In a large sense that is the story of the United States culture also, but in New Orleans the expressions of that culture have included jazz, rhythm and blues, a distinctive cuisine and so much more. And an attitude towards life that includes a spiritual resilience which has spoken to people around the world for a couple of hundred years” (Tom Piazza, “Why New Orleans Matters,” Feb. 24, 2006), echoing the sentiments of another journalist, Lafcadio Hearn, who had written a century that it was "it is better to live [New Orleans] in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio." (Lafcadio Hearn, 1879). http://lafcadiohearn.org
Many of us couldn’t agree more!