A Depressing Opinion

This from Naked Cartwheels:

"I'm not sure the city can come back," says Louisiana native and novelist James Lee Burke, who believes the flood merely exacerbated the city's decades-long spiral of descent and social deterioration from illegal drugs, crime and government neglect.

Somehow, I always thought that the creator of Dave Robicheaux would have been more optimistic. In the Robicheaux novels, New Orleans, the underdog city, always seems to prevail.