Word: gras
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With Mardi Gras season under way, New Orleans was caught up last week in its traditional flurry of preparations for the 10-day pre-Lenten revelry. But much of the euphoria that usually surrounds the celebration has been replaced this year by anger and anxiety. Reason: an ordinance passed by a unanimous vote of the seven-member city council last December that requires the racially and sexually homogeneous private organizations that stage the carnival to stop discriminating or lose their right to parade...
...Momus -- both all white, all male -- have announced that they will not parade, citing government intrusion. Other krewes have threatened to cancel their parades or relocate them in future years unless the ordinance is radically altered. Such an exodus would be devastating for New Orleans, which depends on Mardi Gras to pack its hotels with thousands of wild-spending tourists who help give the local economy an annual half-billion-dollar boost...
Because Mardi Gras is so indelibly a part of New Orleans, the debate is threatening the city's social and cultural fabric. New Orleans now has a 62% black majority, largely because of white flight. A Times-Picayune poll last week showed that 66% of voters, including most blacks, want the ordinance repealed. The law's chief sponsor, councilwoman Dorothy Mae Taylor, was reviled on posters and T shirts as THE GRINCH THAT STOLE MARDI GRAS. Said carnival spokesman Beau Bassich: "The law wasn't needed. It tampers with a very special tradition that makes New Orleans' appeal so unique...
...whose memberships are never revealed, exclude not just blacks but also women, gays, Jews and Italians. They pay only $100.25 for parade permits but enjoy full city support, including police protection and street cleanup. Proponents of the new law argue that the issue goes beyond racial discrimination during Mardi Gras. Some of the most important krewes have direct ties to such hallowed hideaways as the Boston, Louisiana and Pickwick clubs, where important business deals are often hammered out. Says Taylor: "The Mardi Gras issue is only a smoke screen. There are no crowds of blacks waiting to jump on floats...
Amazing but true: the region surrounding this city in southern France, whose robust cuisine embraces foie gras, fatty duck, preserved goose, chewy red wines and Armagnac brandy, has the lowest rate of heart disease in the entire country. And the French as a nation, despite their substantial lunches and dinners (wine included), are only one-third as likely to die of heart attacks as Americans...