Vic Socotra

26 February 2009

Mardi Gras

(Mardi Gras)

I don’t have a great deal of time this morning, and I am grumpy about it. I am going to be trapped in an airless conference room drawing happy-faces on a pad of paper, listening to some blather about capitalism.

I am not very happy with the capitalists this morning, those bastards.

This particular session is mandatory, and runs for two and a half days. They call it training, but I have another word for it. Anything with the word “mandatory” in it is not going to be fun.

It didn’t take much to get me going this morning. Go to the Post or the Times and you will see it in the lead article in both. There is more detail to the President’s bold tax initiatives that are supposed to pay to make health care more accessible and affordable. There are going to be stricter limits on the benefits of itemized deductions taken by the wealthiest households.

Yeah, you guessed it. That is me and it probably is you, too. They are going to reduce the value of itemized tax deductions for everyone in the top income tax bracket, 35 percent, and many of those in the 33 percent bracket — roughly speaking, starting at $250,000 in annual income for a married couple.

Well, f**k me. That puts a single guy like me right in the cross-hairs. This part of the even bolder cap-and-trade carbon tax, which is as clear in it’s impact as derivative finances. The haul is supposed to amount to over $300 billion over the next ten years.

The Times optimistically calls it a pronounced move to redistribute wealth by re-imposing a larger share of the tax burden on corporations and affluent taxpayers.The White House says it is a fairness issue, and they intend to finance health coverage for the uninsured in part by “rebalancing the tax code so that the wealthiest pay more.”

Balancing? I say screw it. Call it what it is. Theft.

I have to find a hundred grand to make up the lost value on my real estate, the Ex’s attorney clipped me for another hundred grand and insists on stealing the pension, too. I wonder why I am bothering to show up for work, you know? I was bitching about that to the Master Chief. He is working up here for a while from New Orleans, trying to help the whiz-kids understand Admiralty Law, which is a bit like the tax-code only not as straightforward.

He has been a Master Mariner and everything else you can be on the River, and knows more than Mark Twain would have if he had kept an honest job on the steamboat and not got into the writing racket. He still talks like a Master Chief Bo’suns Mate, so if that offends you, the door is over there.

I was saying I ought to just chuck this nonsense and move south. Find a shack with most of the roof and go out to the mailbox once a month with my hand out like everybody else.

He told me I should cool off, though I might like Louisiana.

He said I might like the people, like the Indian-American-Cajun Governor Bobby Jindal, who gave the Republican response to President Obama’s bold vision.

He told me they don’t worry too much about hyphens in describing who they are. These are his words:

“Don't worry too much about Governor Bobby's hyphenations (Indian American etc). he is from Metairie. I've met him on several occasions and exchanged thoughts and some correspondence on the "mud budget", an aspect of coastal zone restoration. We don't think of him as an "Indian American" just a "Coon Ass" from Metairie.

We were surprised by the media reports of the Indian reaction to his election as governor.

I loved that he told a tale of our late and beloved sheriff Harry Lee. That's the Lees of Chinese restaurant and laundry fame in Metairie and not the Lees of Virginia. Sheriff for Life Harry called himself a "Coon Ass". We call Bobby a "Coon Ass" and my Dad was fond of saying that we were the first "Swiss Duche Coon Asses on our block'. The reason that everyone in Louisiana is a "Coon Ass," not just pedigreed French folk is simply that if you were born and raised here you have more in common with your neighbors than with anyone else regardless of race, creed or color. I have some new neighbors who are quickly turning into Muslim Coon Asses.

The Coon Assification Process begins with developing a taste for the local cuisine which contains a lot of things that look strange to non locals but most don't offend even Jewish or Muslim dietary laws and they make us Catholics real happy.

Then certain "Frankish" expressions that have no meaning outside of the state creep in. You develop a taste for Mardi Gras, and the rhythm of the seasons in Louisiana, which are basically pre and post Mardis grais.

Gradually you get used to the heat, then the reptiles, and you become immune to the bugs. Your kids love it and they grow up not wanting to live anywhere else.

Fortunately, you can still get a "shack" at "shack" prices in rural Louisiana. "Rural" however need not be more than an hour from New Orleans or Baton Rouge.

If you want to be something of an urban pioneer you could probably get a "shotgun" (the New Orleans poor man's answer to the NY "Brownstone" at shack prices. A lot of that housing inventory took a hit in Katrina. A lot have been partially to mostly restored but are languishing on the market in fairly decent neighborhoods that are only very slowly coming back. For about $130,000 you could also get a fairly upscale small condo in Metairie near the East Jefferson Hospital medical campus.

It’s walking distance to doctors offices, health clubs, and various eateries. Walking distance to the veteran's Highway parade route (Mardi Grais, St. Patrick's, and the St. Patrick's / St. Joseph combined celebration. On that day the Coon Asses of more or less Irish and Italian descent parade together.

The members of the Irish marching club ride floats and throw cabbages to the crowd. The members of the Italian marching club dress up in tux and carry canes with large flowers embedded and work the pretty girls (and some of the ugly grandmaws) for a kiss in exchange for a flower. Its sort of a more gentle version of the standard Mardi Grais practice of flashing boobs for beads.

Notice how the sons of the Irish and Italians took to parading and modified and enri ched the French Louisiana custom of throwing trinkets from the floats. This is a classic example of the Coon assification process. A parade in Louisiana is not a spectator event it is street theater with heavy audience participation.

American employers facilitate that by generally refusing to hire Coon Asses for national jobs due to their status among fortune 500 personnel officers as "homing pigeons."

You arrive as an "Immigrant" like Bobby's Dad and you produce "Coon Ass" children whether you want to or not. Whenever Sheriff Harry Lee would have one of his tiffs with the local or occasionally national media, this 300 pound very Chinese looking individual (except for the Stetson Hat) would look the camera right in the lens and say; "I don't know about all that, I'm just an old Coon Ass sheriff trying to protect my parish."

No one in Louisiana batted an eye, Of course Old Harry was a "Coon Ass." The one thing that the non-French Coon Asses borrowed from the Cajuns is a self depreciating sense of humor . Maybe African Americans, or Indian Americans, or Asian Americans, are too sensitive about that portion of their ethnicity to joke about it. But down in bayou country we are all more Coon Ass than anything else and we do joke about it no matter how the gumbo of our personal gene pool is distributed. We have our own universal cultural ethnicity. America has been trying to achieve that since the founding.

So if Bobby Jindal ever makes it to the White House the other Americans and th e Indians will be remarking about the "first Indian-American etc." But there will be dancing in the streets of Metairie (there usually is any way during Mardi Grais, Jazz Fest, Spring Fiesta, and Bastille day anyway) for the "first Coon Ass President!'

A Coon Ass is a Coon Ass never a hyphenated something else "Coon Ass.".We Coon Asses tend to think of our "Americanness" the same way but the rest of of America still seems to want to hyphenate. Here in Louisiana Bobby is just the "governor" never the first hyphenated something or other. Bobby is a "guy from Metairie". If he ever does make it to the white House as some predict back in Louisiana he will simply be "the Coon Ass President.'

Louisiana, America's alternative to Brazil.”

That was a lot to process, all at once, and I had to get to mandatory training with everyone else, but it occurred to me that I ought to get serious about moving south. I like the Samba.

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