“The Devil is in the Detail”

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O. K., stop writing! I get it; usage of the first person pronoun would have been dangerously presumptuous for a courtier of Louis the-next-to-last. Madam de Pompadour said, “Après nous le deluge (After us the flood),” not, as I wrote last month, “Après moi le deluge,” which means, as far too many of you know, “After me the flood.”

Law or common sense cautions against assuming the interests of wee-the-people are the same as they-the-leaders. Take Landslide’s popularity. The sky is falling, robber barons meet secretly in government palaces, the national treasury is plundered, the World Trade Center has left Manhattan and the national-debt-clock has returned, and wee-the-people tell the pollsters we now love his leadership more than ice cream in Summer. Sounds like fuzzy math to me.

Isn’t this the same Bush who could not get a majority of Americans to vote him into office? The one who championed the plundering that reprised the Debt-Clock? The man who invited those robber barons into secret inner circles (or was it the other way around)? And now we love him more than we love our own freedom?

Under Bush’s new centralized order New Orleans may not have to wait for terrorists. The emptied Federal treasury has brought a halt to hurricane levee construction downriver, while Uptown the half-completed drainage system will remain uncompleted, and in the suburbs (brilliantly Bush country even before the conversion) West Nile Virus infects new victims weekly.

Shouldn’t hurricane protection, drainage and West Nile Virus command Federal attention? Maybe it isn’t, but West Nile Virus smells like terrorism. It bears the name of the Nile (a river not found in the United States) and the results are the same whether intentional or not. The first New Yorkers contracted it before September Eleventh. Then Georgia last Summer. Now Louisiana. Listen up, Mr. Popularity; West Nile Virus is making its way towards your Texas border, and wee-the-people will ultimately love you a whole lot more if you start building emergency hospitals instead of more bridges over the Constitution.

Speaking of bio-terrorism, have you heard about the synthetic poliovirus? Can Hell have a darker level than our decision to invest in simpler, smaller, easier-to-use bio-weapons, like anthrax and now polio? (Though we had the world’s biggest baddest weapons from the end of World War II till today.) The Devil is in this detail where once God lived. The scientists stirring this cauldron never knew what it was like to have Summer polio epidemics and little boys and girls in iron lungs and dead-end lives. I am a polio survivor, with degeneration problems showing up only now. For most of my adult life hardly anyone knew. But I knew. It is being trapped like one of those wasps some other insect lays their eggs inside after paralyzing them. The poor wasp lies there being eaten alive by events out of its control. Polio, for Christ’s sake!

“Does the country really need a new poliovirus?” L. A. Norma asked.

“I read where Arthur Andersen is the one taking those Bush polls,” she said to the driver as we stepped down from the Vieux Carre bus at Poydras and Saint Charles. She fired up a Camel and said to me, “I finally figured out the significance of those missing ‘Ws’ Landslide claimed Clinton took on his way out of the White House. It’s Landslide’s middle name and he needs it, George ‘Whitewash’ Bush!”

We took lunch at Susan Spicer's new place, Cobalt, on Saint Charles Avenue in the C. B. D. We had terrific liver and onions, with bacon and mashed potatoes that could comfort a Gore voter. With bread so good. With salt-free sweet butter. The mashed potatoes even had lumps – required in today’s classy café society.

“It shows the potatos are real,” Norma said. “None of that potato-like fluffy snowflake crap here!” The liver was truly calf’s (poor dear) and in the room were folks we knew, a plus for snazzy dining. We will go back. One thing I would not have done is caramelizing the onions, but that is only my taste. They were certainly World class caramelized onions. A comfort meal in the comfort of hip decor.

All right, I’ll tell. We saw Faubourgundian Angela King, who captains the good ship Hanson Gallery on rue Royal, in the tony upper reaches of the nearby faraway French Quarter. Incidentally, Hanson is offering a limited ten percent Summer discount on items up to five thousand dollars. Fifteen percent on items over that. Well, don’t just sit there – use your tax refund.

Also spotted at Cobalt, Sandra Dartus, Director of The French Quarter Festivals. This is the agency handling the second annual August fourth birthday bash for Pops, the Potentate of Tooting, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. The festival (August first to fourth) should bring out the best of the best. You will find them mostly around the Old Esplanade Mint and in nearby cafés and bars. Something extra-inviting is Father LeDoux’s 10 a. m. Sunday Jazz Mass at Saint Augustine, 1210 rue Governor Nichols, in Faubourg Treme`. If you have not heard the Gospel according to Father LeDoux you have missed something of today’s historic New Orleans. For information go to Satchmo Summer Fest. [www.satchmosummerfest.com]