Chris Rose -- Who Dat?

Perhaps more than most, New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose was changed by Katrina. Prior to the storm, he wrote a fluffy celebrity-sighting column that could often be sort of unbearably entertaining. After Katrina, his intensely personal columns became the most reliable barometer of the overall mental health of the new New Orleans. As courageous as they are hilarious, those columns earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination and have been published as a collection -
1 dead in attic - the film rights of which are rumored to have been acquired by Paramount.

I mention all this both to establish both his prominence as a post-K cultural phenomenon, and also to justify my linking to his
Saints column today as shorthand for explaining the cultural significance of yesterday's win.