From my review of Rob Walker's Letters From New Orleans, now up at the Voices of NOLA:
For people not intimately familiar with the city’s secrets, the most surprising essay may well be “High Society.� It is here that Walker breaks down the different components of New Orleans’s upper crust, revealing all the sordid racism and egotism that is apparently as much a part of Mardi Gras history as the beads and Indians. The Rex ball is televised; the Comus and Momus krewes refused to say they wouldn’t discriminate; the rich get dressed up and drunk; and the middle class shake their heads at both the hypocrisy they are watching and the fact that they bother to watch it. “The basic transaction seems to be that these aristocrats give us all the gift of Carnival and in return they get to play dress-up and belong to exclusive clubs. Their goal is not to recognize and welcome new members into their society; their goal is to protect what they have.�
