New Orleans Strip Clubs: Letter From New Orleans
January 9, 2012
My favorite novel is Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. In the book, Louisiana governor Willie Stark is a fictional rendering of Huey P. Long, the corrupt, benevolent populist governor of Louisiana. The best line in the book is Stark talking about the broken nature of humanity, and how the most dishonest people in politics are those who pretend that anyone can outrun their worst impulses: “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”
This quote lives at the heart of Louisiana politics. When I began reciting it to Carville last week, he finished it with me. The state has always elected folk heroes who did naughty things: hookers, affairs with Bourbon Street strippers, freezers of money, and an endless rap sheet of boring felony charges. The two biggest folk heroes are Long and Edwards.
See the full article from “Grantland”
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