Not everybody fled New Orleans or tried to ride it out alone with the family dog in a sea of fecal matter. The waters did not reach the city’s Uptown area where the rich people live. For a while, according to the Wall Street Journal, things were a bit difficult for the high tax bracket set. For a few days there some of them were reduced to dipping into their swimming pools to scoop up water to flush the toilets.
In short order the water came back on and Audubon Park in the heart of their neighborhood was temporarily converted into a heliport for shipping in gasoline to run the electric generators, potable water, squads of armed guards and gourmet entremets. Thus supplied, Mr. Ashton O'Dwyer, one of the city’s grandest old names, rode out the worst days with ice cubes in his drinks talking on his cell phone.
The Journal reports that, “A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. Mr. Reiss fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter.” Mr. Reiss does not seem disposed to heed mandatory evacuation orders. As a don’t-you-dare-ignore me and my money person Mr. Reiss has some definite ideas for when New Orleans exchanges the pelican for the phoenix as the city bird and rises from the filthy waters of the 9th ward to a new, glistening white greatness.
Quoth Mr. Reiss: "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically. I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."
Before the water has been drained from the place, plans are being laid and it’s not looking good for Porgy and Bess. It’s not just the streets that are going to be sterilized. New Orleans is about to be de-germed and de-poored. Well-to-do African Americans are welcome, but the Ashton-Reiss set are already speculating about how the new New Orleans might just become a Republican bastion.
Hey, through flood, fire and famine money still talks. As it ever was, so it will ever be.