Some funny Will Durst quotes are up on Daily Kos this AM, including this one:

“As soon as New Orleans gets back to normal, I plan on volunteering to go down there and help drink their economy back on its feet.”

I couldn’t agree more. There have been tons of benefits in Seattle for Hurricane Relief and the Red Cross, and we organized a little benefit here at The Stranger to raise money for the employees of the Gambit, the alt weekly in New Orleans. But if we really want to follow through—if we really want to make New Orleans whole—then we’ve got down there and drink just as soon as the city re-opens for business. I think a group of Seattle’s hard-drinking do-gooders should start working on a package tour to New Orleans once it’s booze & boobs & business as usual. Let’s charter a couple of flights to New Orleans, book a couple of floors of a hotel, and head down there with money to spend, livers to abuse, and tits to flash.

Members of the American Taliban—members in good standing, not cranks—are running around telling their Christian Jihadists that God destroyed New Orleans to snuff out the rampant hedonism on display in that city every night of the week. That’s bullshit, as I pointed out in an earlier post. God destroyed Biloxi’s casinos utterly and completely, but He left the French Quarter relatively unharmed. The French Quarter, of course, is the atmospheric magnet that draws hedonists to New Orleans. If God wanted to put a stop to foot-long margaritas and flashed tits, He would have destroyed the French Quarter and left everything else standing. But He didn’t do that, did He?

The French Quarter survived. If we want to help put New Orleans back on its feet, we need to do our part not just for the refugees and the Red Cross, but for the bartenders, club owners, cocktail waitresses, strippers, hookers, and the guys who hose the vomit off the streets of the French Quarter in the AM. I’m completely serious: Let’s book a flight, sell tickets, and go!