The glass house @JohnGeorges2010 lives in

The conventional wisdom is that the longer we live, the less relevant the indiscretions of youth become. That's certainly what the John Georges campaign would want you to believe, since local blogger American Zombie did the research to confirm that Georges was quite the racist in his Tulane days.

Still, you'd think Georges would stay away from accusing other candidates of racist behavior, lest his past become an issue. Using an ambiguous statement by Mitch Landrieu to paint him as having a racial problem only invites further examination of Georges membership in the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Tulane. We look forward to an explanation from Georges on why he attended events with young white men in blackface. As recently as 1997, DKE was exhibiting this sort of behavior:

Last Friday, members of a fraternity distributed flyers under the doors of white male students at Loyola and Tulane Universities here, inviting them to a rush for Delta Kappa Epsilon. The fraternity's event for Jan. 20, Martin Luther King's birthday, was ''DKE National Holiday.'' The flyer invited recipients to ''Come celebrate the King's birthday with fried chicken from Popeye's, watermelon and a 'forty' '' -- a 40-ounce bottle of beer.

This is the organization in which a man who would be New Orleans' next mayor has pride.

In other news, Oyster dissects the Louisiana Tribune's endorsement of Georges. One of his thoughts caught my eye:

What can I say? I guess I'm sort of surprised that the Trib didn't endorse Troy Henry.

That's because Oyster is looking at this in terms of black-and-white, not green. Most likely, Dwight McKenna (editor of the Tribune) likes the idea of being a regular at Galatoire's. He's probably not the only one. After all, WBOK's Gerod Stevens doesn't mind discussing racism with a guy whose college fraternity used to hang a noose over the front door.