Chasing the Blues

Saints and Tigers Head for Football Top

I'm amazed by Drew Brees and the Saints, their offensive machine even more efficient than when they won the Super Bowl. The Saints got screwed on the seeding, and so face a daunting patch to headed back to the Super Bowl, having to travel to San Francisco and then probably Green Bay, but this is the most proficient offense in the history of football. Watching the Saints, I wonder if I'm in some kind of childhood dream, especially since I remember the old, goofy Saints, a standing joke. 

New Orleans is known for great creativity, in food and music, but the Saints are a different kind of success for which the old city has never been known. Cuisine, jazz, blues and rap are associated with decadence, while pro football success is tied to discipline, business, purpose, teamwork, etc. So, Brees and the Saints bring a different model for the city.

Meanwhile, the LSU Tigers prepare for the national championship. I'm glad the Tigers are enjoying such success in football, but it breaks my heart that the university's academic purpose is severely wounded by budget cuts by the inexplicably popular Bobby Jindal. I love the Southern Review and LSU Press as much as the football team.

One amusing item I saw on Facebook: The Roosevelt Hotel now has a drink for the Honey Badger, LSU's flamboyant defensive back. Seeing the menu raised memories of Huey Long, who loved LSU and strove to make it a great institution, unlike today's short-sited, tax-averse governor. 

Recently, I read a piece by Tom Friedman in the Times about how America's future depends on cities with great universities, a vibrant, creative population and innovatative busineses. Baton Rouge could be a city like that, and has been at fleeting moments, but LSU and Louisiana's capital city has often been crippled by short-sighted, corrupt politics and a provincial, uncommitted population. 

 

No Bullet Holes in Louisiana State Capitol From Long Shooting

Among fascinating revelations in Times-Picayune reporter Robert Travis Scott's second article marking the 75th anniversary of Huey P. Long's asssassination is that the identations in a State Capitol hallway pointed out for years as bullet holes from the eventful night turn out to be just irregularities in the marble. Another myth collapsed.

While Scott mentions medical controversties in passing, the gist of the article is the continuing controversy over Long's death, about whether he was shot by the young doctor Carl Weiss or killed by a stray bodyguard's bullet. Scott uncovers fascinating evidence, incluind the late discovery of the .32 caliber pistol owned by Weiss. Weiss' son, Carl Weiss Jr., three months old at the time of the assassination, says his father didn't kill Long. In the 1980s, he had a cordial lunch with Huey's son, Sen. Russell Long.

Citing a variety of sources, the article ends without a definitive answer. Among the links in the Picayune report are a gallery of Long photos; a report by the MONY Life Insurance Co. that found the shooing "accidental";  a State Police report issued years after the slaying; and the newspaper's coverage of the shooting.

...An LSU fan's sign at the Chick-Fil-A game against North Carolina at the Georgia Dome: "Thanks to BP, we're Tarheels too."

...LSU will play the Oregon Ducks at Jerry Jones' palace in Dallas to open the 2011 football season. LSU will receive up to $3.5 million, and it will be a chance to expose the "LSU brand," according to an athletics department official. Glad to hear LSU is a brand, and that the football team remains profitable as the state slashes funding to the school's academic programs. If the school eventually closes its doors, at least the LSU football brand will remain. The Oregon Ducks are a brand too, if frequent appearances of their cute Duck mascot on ESPN is any indication. Of course, Oregon receives a bunch of money from another famed brand, Nike, which also gives equipment to LSU. So, "the Cowboys Classic" should be a great branding moment for all involved. 

Remembering Huey P. Long, Louisiana's Kingfish

Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Huey P. Long's assassination, of which I was unaware until discovering an interesting article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune uncovering the controversies still surrounding the shooting of the Kingfish at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge on Sept. 8, 1935.

Robert Travis Scott's piece goes into how incomplete and inconclusive the evidence is; as he says, there was no CSI at the time in small-town Baton Rouge, and Long's circle covered up much. In fact, the investigation was limited to a belated coroner's inquest, and the police work was poorly done.

The big question is whether reputed assassin Dr. Carl Weiss actually shot the Louisiana senator, who tightly controlled Louisiana politics, or whether Long was shot by a bodyguard. Weiss was slaughtered by a barrage of bullets fired by Huey's bodyguards in the hallway between the Capitol's House and Senate chambers, but Scott looks at the question of whether Weiss actually possessed the small pistol allegedly used to fire a bullet into Huey's stomach. Some reports say Weiss approached Long to talk with him, and punched the senator in his ample mouth, and then the bodyguards opened fire, with one of their bullets striking Long. Scott goes into details that were new to me; that Weiss, a young Baton Rouge doctor with a small child, had left his pistol in his Buick when he parked it in the Capitol parking lot, and that Huey's goons had searched the car and found the handgun in the glover compartment and planted the weapon at the scene.

The case has fascinated me since childhood, when I repeatedly read my father's copy of old States-Item reporter Hermann P. Deutsch's "The Huey P. Long Murder Case." The book contained photos from the scene, including one of Weiss' bullet-riddled, wide-eyed body. The shooting was vivid to Baton Rouge children who visited the State Capitol, where tour guides dutifully pointed out bullet holes in the stone walls of the hallway.

Later, when I worked at the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, I was often fascinated by a framed State-Times front page from Sept. 9, 1935, with glaring headlines about Huey's shooting. One curious story on the page was that a man in downtown Baton Rouge had been arrested for marijuana possession on the same day as Huey's shooting.

As Scott says, the shooting of Long will remain inconclusive. He discounts the old theory that Weiss was acting as the agent of an organized conspiracy to kill Long. Not mentioned is an old story that I first heard in childhood at the barbershop where I loved to spend an hour or two reading comics while waiting to have my hair cut, that Franklin Roosevelt had Huey killed. That came from the lips of Bob the Barber, a cracker barrel philosopher who carried out his trade with his scissors and combs despite having only three fingers on one hand.

Those of us growing up in Baton Rouge in the '50s and '60s had vivid memories of Huey's brother, Earl K. Long, and the bizarre climax of his last term as governor, when he was transported to and escaped from a series of mental institutions. Later, we read in A.J. Liebling's "The Earl of Louisiana" about Uncle Earl's courageous battle for civil rights and listened to Baton Rouge reporter Brooks Reed's recordings of Long from the Texas instiutiton he escaped with the aid of political allies like Sheriff Cat Doucet of Opelousas. Then, there was a movie about Earl's relationship with Blaze Starr, starring Paul Newman.

Earl was real to us; Huey a distant, godlike legend. We devoured T. Harry Williams' definitive biography of Huey when it came out, growing closer to the Kingfish and his legend. Through the years, more books came out on both Huey and Earl. Huey's spirit haunted Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men," and Randy Newman's record "Good Ole Boys" gave the saga a vivid musical rendering.

Huey built LSU and made it one of the finest universities in the South. Now, with the grinning huckster Bobby Jindal slashing the university budget, Huey's legacy of support for the university grows even brought. Long's dictatorial regime undoubtedly had evil consequences, but I'll raise a glass to the Kingfish on Sept. 8, and remember Uncle Earl as well.     

New Orleans on Upswing, Five Years After Katrina

Five years after Katrina's devastation of New Orleans, the images remain unbelievable of the city's flooding and people abandoned on rooftops, crying for help. The most heart-wrenching piece I've seen was Larry King's interview with Harry Connick Jr., in which those horrible days after Katrina were revisited and optimism for the future eloquently expressed.

Many things look on the upswing for the old city. President Obama in his speech at Loyola gave a strong vision for New Orleans' future. Public education is reportedly being revitalized, new businesses are moving in and the health-care system is under reconstruction. The Saints' Super Bowl championship gave the city a strong model of hard work, community dedication and success.

Even before Katrina struck, New Orleans, like most of the lower Mississippi River towns, was a failed city. Some see Katrina as a blessing in disguise, giving the "shock" needed for a true resurgence. Once New Orleans had real industries like shipbuilding and a vibrant local economy with a host of breweries, bottling companies, banks and financial companies and food manufacturers. The music and entertainment industries were always strong, but too small and insular to support a major city. Slowly, with the decline of the city's ports, manufacturing and trade, the economy turned to a narrow dependence on tourism, along with the continued if declining presence of the oil industry.

 Reports about memorial cermonies in the devasted lower Ninth Ward said that the neighborhood is being rebuit as a "green" community. From that base, New Orleans can perhaps turn itself into a center of the green industries that Obama touts, supplanting its oil economy.

Another posititve sign is the strengthening of the city's levee system, to prevent future tragedies like Katrinia, although the city will always be geographically vulnerable  to hurricanes. Another huge threat is the continued destruction of the Gulf fo Mexico wetlands south of the city, a problem given attention during the oil spill. Again, Obama promises action to stop wetlands loss.

After five years, many New Orleanians remain displaced and lost. Violent crime is stills high and poverty ingrained. Yet New Orleans shows a vibrancy and productive spirit that had eroded long before Katrina.

Farewell, Tony Judt

The Sunday New York Times reported the death of Tony Judt, New York University professor and noted "public intellectual" who stirred the anger of America's pro-Israeli community with his essays aruging Israel should be a secular state, part Arab and Palestinian. In recent years, Judt had been battling Lou Gehrig's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Over recent months, I've enjoyed Judt's autobiographical essays in The New York Review of Books, some of the most pleasurable writing I've found in a while. His accounts of growing up in Britain, coming to the United States and immersing himself in the free-wheeling American culture (as a young man, he made a cross country automibile trip that he details), and his academic background were vivid and imaginative, capturing a certain time, place and culture with the immediacy of a fine novel or movie. His last piece I read, in the July 16 NYR, gave an impassioned defense of the necessity of the precise use of worlds, although I found it a bit off-base, since he directs his criticism at today's Internet-oriented students, when the abuse of language has been going on for decades.

Before discovering these memoirs, I'd been reading for years his pieces on European culture and history, world and national politics, and Israel and the Mideast, although I'd found these much tougher going. After making the effort to go through one of his pieces, I felt as if I'd consumed my intellectual fiber.

His views on Israel, which according to The Times led to the cancellation of a lecture at New York University and his banishment from the pages of Marty Peretz's New Republic, I felt I lacked the knowledge to judge, although they made a convincing case. His views don't seem that far away from those of The New York Times' Tom Friedman (see Friedman's Aug. 8 column).

Judt also brought his battle with ALS to the public, including an interview I heard on Terry Gross's "Fresh Air." He poignantly conveyed the paradox of his illness, that such a verbal and articulate witness to the world was losing his ability to communicate orally and losing his command over his own body. He also expressed sorrow that he wouldn't live to see his sons grow into maturity.

At his death, I can only hope that the NYR has a few more autogtraphical pieces by him to keep publishing. If not, I'll miss the reading pleasure of his urbane, funny (especially when looking back upon his own foibles) and  intelligent voice.

Now My Office Is the Library

Because my home PC suffered a breakdown, I am writing this on the library's computer. Sitting here among children doing homework and women typing away, I feel like Ray Bradbury writing his novels via computer. The clock is ticking: 16 minutes remaining, says the small box.

One of those perplexing choices faces me: whether to fix the computer or buy a new one. Numerous Geek squads are listed in the phone book, that quaint relic of the 20th century. I call a couple, but they don't answer the phone. My sole reason to save the computer is the directory of articles, stories, poems and plays in the "My Documents" section.

Working on the library computer is quite efficient. Except the clock keeps ticking. 12 minutes left. That's enough for now.

Kids Say the Craziest Things

Back at work with my brush at American education, scoring student writing. An interesting experience. On the whole, I find the youth of America funny, witty, perceptive and touching. The folks with whom I work are very nice folks, accepting of this quite older fellow in their midst.

Since I've been working this project, my time on Facebook, Drudge Report, etc. has lessened. Nor have I been following cable news. While I usually get most of my news the old-fashioned way, from ink on dead trees, I've been even more dependent on the newspaper.

The AJC, since its move to Dunwoody, is giving more attention to national and international news, even playing two or three national stories on the front page. I like the AJC these days, with a few exceptions.

The world economy looks pretty shaky. The Dow plunged on some fluke. I've been blissfully happy not following such events so closely.

Kentucky Wildcats Again Fall Short

Since childhood, I've been an interested observer of Kentucky Wildcats basketball, so I'm fascinated by the Big Blue's struggles over the past decade or so to win another NCAA championship.

In the august days of Adolph Rupp, my father used to take me to one LSU basketball game a year, when the lordly Cats came to play in the old LSU Ag Center. LSU was then at a low hoops ebb, one year managing to win just three games. Kentucky, with its snappy drills, crisp passing and advanced strategy, was like the Harlem Globetrotters to LSU's Washington Generals. They were like an advanced species who followed the arcane, strange rituals of the exotic cult of basketball. We'd sit there watching the tall, quick Wildcats carry out their pregame drills, their precision layups, their intricate patterns. They were like the circus and a parade. Then, with starry eyes, we'd watch the Cats take the court, hapzardly laid down on the Ag Center's dirt floor, upon which we also saw the rodeo every year. The Wilcats would win by 30 or 40 points, running rings around the hapless Tigers with a dazzling display of basketball, dribbling, passing, making steals, hitting soaring long shots and theatrical hook shots and surgically going inside for layups.

One season when I battled the flu for weeks, I fell in love with Rupp's Runts: Little Louie Dampier, Pat Riley and Larry Conley. I watched them on Saturday afternoons on a small, snowy black-and-white TV screen. Along with the Yankees, the Celtics and the Packers, they were one of my favorite teams, at least for that season. I followed them all the way to that shocking game in the NCAA finals when they lost to the all-black lineup of Texas Western.

Then, Press and Pete Maravich arrived in Baton Rouge and started LSU's basketball revival. Actually, old-timers like my father during the darkest days of LSU hoops remembered the great days of the 1950s, when LSU had Bob Pettit, Sparky Wade and Joe Dean and actually had made it to the Final Four, losing to Kentucky. Pete's wizardy drew big crowds to the Ag Center, but he never beat Rupp's Cats. Actually, Press coached the Tigers to a home win over the Cats the season after Pete left for the NBA. I was a freshman at LSU then. I still remember my amazement at watching mighty Kentucky fall.

With the coming of Dale Brown, the Tigers rose to national prominence and competed for years on a pretty much equal footing with Kentucky. When Joe B. Hall's Kentucky team won a national championship, my father and I went to the new Assembly Center, later named for Pete, to watch Rudy Macklin and the Tigers beat the Cats in double overtime. If memory serves, that was Kentucky's sole loss of the year. Later, I saw LSU beat Joe B.'s Kentucky in Birmingham for the Tigers' only SEC tournament champioinship, and Daddy Dale's Tigers beat Eddie Sutton's Wildcats in the NCAA Regional Finals at the old Atlanta Omni to advance to the Final Four. A historic note: I first heard the "Who Dat" cheer from LSU fans at that game. Later, of course, it because associated with the New Orleans Saints, especially during the run to the Super Bowl championship.

After a big decline in Kentucky basketball fortunes, I watched them revive under Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith. But since Smith's departure under fire, the Cats have struggled mightily to find the right championship formula. They've even seen SEC rival Florida win two NCAA championships, leaving some recruits to talk about the Gators' basketball tradition rather than Kentucky's. This year, with John Calipari, and the splendid freshmen John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, I was certain the Cats were headed to another championship. Then the sharpshooting West Virginia Mountaineers upended Kentucky, its freshmen crumbling like, well, freshmen.

What's next for the Big Blue? They've tried the unsavory Calipari, and the one-and-done-rent a freshman program, although Cousins definitely should stay for another season rather than going to the NBA to sit on the bench or become the ninth man for some team. Wall will probably be able to play in the NBA. Maybe the next step will be to recruit "scholar athletes" who will stay until their senior years, building a strong tradition of teamwork, a la Final Four participant Butler. More likely, Calipari will find a few more super freshmen for next year. Or, perhaps he should try only one super freshman, as Syracuse's Jim Boeheim did with Carmelo Anthony.

This assumes that Calipari will return to Kentucky, rather than moving on to another school, leaving behind NCAA probation at his former school. That won't be so unusual for Kentucky, which received serious NCAA punishment after Eddie Sutton departed. But hit-and-run Calipari will likely stay, since he's running short of programs to flee to after ruining the one he's at.

No matter what, I'll be watching Kentucky with keen interest. They've been the team I've loved to hate, or even, I'll admit it, loved in that one glorious Rupp's Runts season, since I was a boy.  

More Commercials Than Basketball on CBS

The Kansas State-Xavier and Cornell-Kentucky games were compelling, but my enjoyment was stressed by the frequent commercials as the two contests played out. After Cornell fell short with a late run, we never saw the Big Red again, because of all of the commercials and the switch to the admittedly more thrilling Kansas State-Xavier game. As Kansas State-Xavier headed to its exciting end, the coaches frequently called timeouts, leading CBS to pack the time with commercials, cutting away from the strategy and excitment of the gym. Only once do I remember the network staying at the arena during a timeout.

Yes, I know that CBS needs the ads to pay for its huge cotract with the NCAA. Yet does every timeout have to be packed with commercials? A huge part of the blame rests with the coaches for their frequent timeouts, yet it would be nice to see some crowd color more frequently or perhaps hear a bit more analysis by the commentators.

During football season, the Wall Street Journal ran a poll showing the typical NFL broadcast has only 14 minutes of actual action. In the last two hours of the Kansas State-Xavier game, I'd be surprised if there were five minutes of actual play.

Will NCAA Final Four Be an All-Cinderella Dance?

Underdog lovers are agog at the prospect of an all-Cinderella Final Four. The way the brackets are aligned, St. Mary's could win the south region, Cornell take the East, Northern Iowa emerge in the the Midwest and Butler or Xavier  in the the West. This Mid-Major nirvana would surely cause CBS to blink its big black eye, with low ratings likely for its big-money payout. Of course, Cornell represents the non-Midmajor Ivy League, which has not had a Final Four representative since Penn showed up in 1979 for the honor of being pummelled by Magic Johnson's Michigan State.

The former Tiffany network can relax. If history holds true, perennial basketball heavyweights like Duke, Kentucky,  Michigan State and Syracuse will likely make it through to the championship finals.

Baylor would be a welcome change, but with a No. 3 seed, the Bears are not really a darkhorse. Surprisingly, Tennessee has never made it past the Sweet 16, so the No. 6 seeded Vols would also be a refreshing newcomer, if they beat frequent Final Four contestant Ohio State.

Those with true Cinderella status are No. 10 seed St. Mary's, No. 12 seed Cornell and No. 9 seed Northern Iowa, slayers of mighty defending champion Kansas. Butler, seeded 5, and Xavier, 6, are on the Cinderella bubble.

Unlike football, the NCAA basketball tournament at least affords teams like Cornell the chance to compete against the Big Boys and perhaps come out victorious. Despite the tournament's tradition of upsets, though, the sport's powers generally rise to the top.