The Will Do City

Just a relatively short one tonight as I've managed to goof up my schedule on the night of a World Cup qualifier I wanted to watch.

World Cup Qualifiers

Our national soccer team will play in the next World Cup, to be held in Germany next year. That was decided by a decisive 2-0 victory over Mexico that I also watched Saturday. Given that we'd already qualified and had three round-robin games left, I wasn't expecting a stellar performance by our squad in tonight's match against Guatemala. In fact, I knew that Bruce Arena would be trying out new talent. With only a couple of exceptions, subbed in during the second half, the squad was almost entirely new to me.

We tied Guatemala 0-0 and really should have won by a goal or so. What's more, Guatemala really could have used a win to aid its flagging cause to qualify. And the game was at Guatemala.

Why is this newsworthy? It shows that our team has quite a bit of depth. When I was a kid, soccer was still fairly new to the United States, at least as a sport played by non-immigrants. Our national teams were usually lousy until the last few World Cups, and even during those, I've seen noticeable improvements in the quality of play by our side, particularly on the offensive end.

Remembering this, it's nice to be able to watch a game at the international level and be able to say that we "should've won" after we played our second stringers, who hadn't taken the field together enough to develop good chemistry besides! Especially when said game was basically a must-win for the opponent and ended in a draw.

It's nice to be able to watch an American team take the field and expect a good game, if not a win.

A big fat apology...

... goes to Houston from yours truly.

I may or may not owe one, but I don't do those mealy-mouthed "conditional apologies" that leftist celebrities and politicians do. ("If you were offended, I apologize...") Either I apologize or I don't. If in doubt, I err on the side of courtesy. Anyway, enough pussy-footing around. On to what I'm apologizing for....

The facetious title of yesterday's post ("The Vulture of the West") was certainly not meant to denigrate my home town. Period. I apologize for sounding, of all things, like the New York Times, which apparently did slam Houston yesterday, likening its business community to a bunch of ambulance-chasers.

KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston has caught the New York Times Company slurring Houston's rescue efforts in a sneaky yet stupid maneuver. How do you like this for the first sentence in a story about Houston's sheltering efforts on behalf of the evacuees, by Houston-based NYT reporter Simon Romero: "No one would accuse this city of being timid in the scramble to profit from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

I just wanted to make that clear.

In fact, after seeing the sharp contrast between the evacuation efforts at the two domes, Super and Astro, I kept thinking about the saying, "can do city." Houston tops that. It's the "Will Do City".

Houston might also, as the American Thinker article later indicates and my observations yesterday on the cultural affinities between it and New Orleans, be described as, "New Orleans as it could've and should've been."

Houston is the example New Orleans should have learned from decades ago. While New Orleans and its insular elite made it difficult for outsiders to gain social acceptance, its banks focused on local established borrowers, and its government proved more interested in squeezing taxes out of companies than encouraging their growth, Houston established itself as the headquarters of the world oil industry. There were plenty of reasons to have expected New Orleans to claim that crown.

My guess is that tens of thousands of Louisianans, forced to leave their beloved New Orleans, will settle down in Houston [italics added].They will find jobs, housing, and a vital community which welcomes newcomers. In no time there will be many new New Orleans-style restaurants enhancing Houston's formidable culinary scene. New jazz clubs will join then honky-tonks, the Houston Grand Opera, and many other musical adornments of Houston's civic culture.

Looks like Thomas Lifson agrees with me about a few things.

Also via today's TIA Daily is a very good article comparing Houston and New Orleans. My focus yesterday on certain superficial cultural similarities between the two cities should not obscure their many important differences. These differences underly the stark contrast between how they handled the hurricane refugee situation and bear remembering.

The reason New Orleans slid so quickly from civilization into Third World conditions was that it was pretty much a Third World city already, and didn't have too far to go. In its violence, in its corruption, in its reliance on ambience and tourism as its critical industry, in its one-party rule, in its model of graftocracy built on a depressed and crime-ridden underclass that was largely kept out of the sight and the mind of vacationing revelers, it was much more like a Caribbean resort than a normal American city. Its crime and murder rates were way above national averages, its corruption level astounding. The latter was written off as being picturesque and perversely adorable, until it suddenly wasn't, as it paid off in hundreds of buses--that could have borne thousands of stranded people to safety--sitting submerged in water, and police either looting or AWOL.

...

Let us look now at Houston, for it is the second city in this cosmic drama, and one in which [Alexis de] Tocqueville would feel right at home. Like so many cities in the Sunbelt, it is expanding, entrepreneurial, based on the future, and the place where the "much celebrated American can-do machine that promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people" comes roaring to life. "In 1920, New Orleans's population was nearly three times that of Houston," says Kotkin. "During the '90s, the Miami and Houston areas grew almost six times as fast as greater New Orleans, and flourished as major destinations for immigrants . . . These newcomers have helped transform Miami and Houston into primary centers for trade, investment and services, from finance and accounting to medical care for the entire Caribbean basin. They have started businesses, staffed factories, and become players in civic life."

Furthermore, the article articulates a point I've been pondering with regards to whether the poverty-striken segment of the New Orleans diaspora will ever return.

Joel Kotkin in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com. "Tourism defines contemporary New Orleans's economy more than its still-large port, or its remaining industry, or its energy production. Although there is nothing wrong, per se, in being a tourist town, it is not an industry that attracts high-wage jobs; and tends to create a highly bifurcated social structure. This can be seen in New Orleans's perennially high rates of underemployment, crime and poverty." New Orleans, in short, was the place you went to take a vacation, not to prosper in life and start a family, much less start a business. This lack of opportunity, or the upward ladder of social mobility, is perhaps one reason so many evacuees felt they were breathing fresh air when they landed in Houston, and are deciding to make it their home [italics added].

It also helps me understand more fully why the evacuees seem to be so taken with H-Town. I thought it was more the immediate contrast with the horrid conditions after the hurricane. But apparently, many found the social structure of New Orleans stifling. (This sentiment is echoed in a quote about blacks leaving New Orleans at the end of the post referenced above.)

Perhaps much of the appreciation for Houston possessed by the evacuees, and by myself for that matter, is a sense-of-life grasp of the efficacious element of its culture. It is undeniably good that commentators are making that difference more explicit. Given that New Orleans will never be the same again anyway, it might as well accept that fact, bite the bullet, and try being more like Houston in a few important ways.

Why not come back better?

-- CAV