I am acting the reactionary Southerner in my response to the insipid cover story in this week's New York Press by Christine Lagorio. I admit that New Orleans has long been guilty of a laissez-faire attitude that permits corruption to rear its ugly head in local politics. But lately people have been working so hard just to keep up morale that to have a stranger come down and party for a week, then predict that we will be washed away again but won’t care is insulting and injurious.

“The city continues to sink farther below sea level every year. Hurricanes like Katrina only speed the process. People still sleep with blue tarps over their heads, but these are the people who will defend their city with 45s. They will keep their dogs by their sides and smoke weed and drink hurricanes until, during and after the next hurricane hits. This city is alive, if not entirely well. Laissez les bontemps roulez!”

“A New Yawkah in N’awlins,” is painful from the title onward. The “N’awlins” thing is a tired stereotype from buttons that tourists buy in the flea market saying “I heart N’awlins.” Some people talk like that, most don't. She might also want to know that locals don’t drink hurricanes. The overly sweet drink is one we overprice and sell to tourists and newly arrived college students. I can state this fact empirically because I’ve bartended all over town. Lagorio’s lack of knowledge about local traditions is analogous with her ignorance about how much we care. Believe you me, if the levees aren’t rebuilt and improved upon by hurricane season, it will not be a reflection of lazy locals, it will be ineptitude on the part of local, state, and federal governance.

But the worst crime Gregorio commits in her story is including the only quote we get from a black person in this context. Gregorio asks a student from Texas A&M:

"Did she see the worst of it? St. Bernard Parish or the Ninth Ward?

'Naw. I don’t know ‘bout that. I like Fat Tuesday, though,” Mitchell said. “They’re a nice culture here. A different culture. New Orleans was made from a black man, you know that? I gotta go find my friend.”

When will the media stop trying to portray Southern black people as ignorant? Did Lagorio see St. Bernard Parish or the Ninth Ward? If so she doesn’t mention it. Instead, she devotes the space to talking about her sister and friends’ experiences in New Orleans. I don't know I'm reacting so strongly, by now I should be used to inaccurate media portayals of my hometown.