Who Dat Saintly Fleur de Lis?

Being a New Orleanian by birth and having grown up on the street named “Fleur de Lis Drive” that suffered badly from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, I’ve been ‘flooded’ with mail and calls from friends about the hullabaloo going on in New Orleans over the Saints football team’s infringement of copyright.

We here in Paris may not be paying all that much attention to who’s headed for the Super Bowl, but all this noise over a Fleur de Lis sure does strike this “New Orleanian-turned-Parisienne’s” home.

The Saints are marchin’ in toward the Super Bowl this Sunday (already a big ‘coup’ for the team and the city) and their anthem, “Who Dat?” has become a controversial issue. Just to clarify, “who dat?” is “Yat” dialect for “who is that?,” and if you know anything about New Orleans, you know that “Whay ya’ at?” is how “Yats” (native New Orleanians) say “How are you doing?” “Dis is haw I groo up taakin’,” before I learned any French or even how to speak so anyone outside of the Big Easy could understand me.

But “Who Dat” is an ingenious marketing campaign that started with a recording in 1983 by Sal and Steve Monistere with members of the Saints offensive line and singer Aaron Neville. Now merchants are printing it on T-shirts and just about everywhere one can make an imprint with a Fleur de Lis in the “o” stirring up even more hullabaloo.

The NFL is cracking down on the unauthorized sales of merchandise bearing the “Who Dat?,” claiming they own the slogan and particularly with those with the Fleur de Lis on it! Merchants are receiving cease and desist orders, but doubt it’s doing much to stop them or their fans.

What cracks me up with that the NFL and the Saints think they ‘own’ the Fleur de Lis, as if they somehow invented the French symbol of the lily. And then the people of New Orleans have come along and said “No, it belongs to everyone including the people of New Orleans.”

Wikipedia.org will tell you that it’s a symbol of royalty dating back to 5th-century symbolic usage by King Clovis I in 493. So, all this time, the French thought it was theirs! Go figure!

Watch out — wear one in your lapel in France and they will think politically you’re a royalist! Where one in New Orleans, and they’ll know you’re a Saints fan.

Either way, I’m wearin’ it. Have you ever seen my Fleur de Lis stockings? They’re a product of
New Orleans, of course…but worn with the spirit of France.