Re: [Nolug] Re: MetairieComputers.com for Sale

On 06/03/2011 09:54 PM, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
>> "Local color" is for 3rd World countries that you ooh and ahh over on
>> vacation then head home thanking God you didn't get diarrhea from the
>> water.
>
> Strongly disagree.
>
> NYC has plenty of local color.
>
> The area I live in (Lancaster County, PA) has tons of local color and no
> one here would think of themselves the way New Orleanians often do, as
> third world equals.
>

Because it often seems that N.O. is completely wrapped up in tradition,
heritage and local color, to the exclusion of -- words to the contrary
-- education and progress.

In the 1960s, the State wanted to run a freeway through the French
Quarter. Preservationists stopped that, and Economists Say that the
resulting tourism saved the city during the 1980s oil slump. But I ask,
"Saved for what? To be a big tourist trap where everyone else comes to
get drunk and act stupid?" That's what the Caribbean is for.

Maybe destroying the French Quarter would have forced the city to
diversify. Or maybe it would have sunk us deeper into reliance on oil
and now we'd be an "Oil Detroit".

-- 
"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure
the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally
corrupt."
Samuel Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749
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