Steve Teeter from New Orleans sent this encouraging dispatch yesterday, but I’ve been out of the office all week, and only just now got it:

Rod, you MUST know about this at once. Convey to the Corner as you see
fit.
I live in New Orleans on Napoleon Avenue, just above Magazine Street, which means that just about every uptown Carnival parade goes right in front of my house. (Because of the construction on Canal Street, they’re all uptown this year.) Minutes ago I was out watching the Krewe of Chaos parade, Chaos being a three-year-old krewe formed from some of the members of the venerable Momus krewe, and continuing their ancient tradition of satire and mockery of current institutions and events.
Float No. 6 sent me rapidly indoors to my keyboard. In the Momus tradition, it was a moderate sized float with 8 or 10 masked riders throwing beads, and it was titled “The Betrayal.” The papier-mache figure on the front was a rather ridiculous looking frog. Along the sides were painted images of determined-looking soldiers carrying American flags through heavy fire, with placards on the float reading “WW-I,” “WW-II,” “Cold War,” “D-Day.” At the rear was a sort of blocky superstructure labeled “French Toaster” with the NATO symbol on its side. At the front, just under the frog and facing forward, was the painted image of a rifle and two placards, the first thing all parade goers would see as it comes down the street, reading “French rifles for sale,” “Never fired, dropped once.”
In the next few hours, this float will roll in front of tens of thousands of parade goers as it wends its way down to Canal Street, and if the reaction of the people I heard around me is any indication, it will be greeted all the way by gales of laughter and loud cheers.