Tale of one city, two citizens

I only caught the tail end of the Spike Lee and Soledad O’Brien special, "Children of the Storm." It looked good, but it came on here at 5 p.m. I wasn’t even off of work. That's what happens when you're living on Mountain Daylight Time.

I did see CNBC’s special on the post-Katrina hurricane recovery in New Orleans, "Against the Tide: The Battle for New Orleans." The most amazing segment came at the end. It was the tale of two corporate titans. One, a V.P. for Shell Oil who refused to let his company abandon New Orleans and its 1,000 employees. Frank Glaviano grew up in the Ninth Ward and came back to his native city after traveling the world for Shell. He thought of his employees first, rebuilding the offshore oil platforms and corporate HQ, second. Shell sponsored Habitat for Humanity homes and several big New Orleans events that helped spur a return to semi-normalcy.

And then there’s Mr. Benson, the owner of the New Orleans Saints, one of those fat-cat owners who’s trying to blackmail the taxpayers into building him a new stadium. After the Superdome was destroyed, he couldn’t wait to get the Saints to San Antonio. He had to be coaxed back to New Orleans by city and state officials who sunk almost $200 million into the Superdome. You know the story of the Saints last season. They came within one game of going to the Super Bowl. Their success jazzed up the citizenry. Probably won’t happen this year. And because big corporate sponsors have probably fled N.O. for good, and a new stadium with luxury skyboxes for the fat cats will never be built, the Saints will be gone by 2011, or shortly thereafter.

It’s just business, as the mobsters said so often in "The Godfather." But where’s the Saints’ owner’s dedication to the people of the city? It’s a hell of a deal when an oil company shows the rest of us what it means to be a good citizen.