NEW ORLEANS — Carnival krewes are now scrambling to find a way to poke fun at the NFL and the referees who failed to call an obvious pass interference penalty.
Saints fans say it cost the team another trip to the Super Bowl.
The Krewe of Tucks is already redesigning its title float with the theme “Tucks Gets Sicker.” Krewe D’etat and the Knights of Chaos, two of the more satirical parades, are also working on floats.
Float builder Richard Valadie, president of Royal Artists, is kicking around some ideas.
“Definitely relevant. It's always a challenge to try and keep these satire parades timely because you can't work on them all in the last month, but we try to keep up with the news,” Valadie said.
Mardi Gras historian Errol Laborde, editor of New Orleans Magazine, says not since Reconstruction has there been a topic more ripe for satire.
“On Reconstruction, there as a division of opinion. There's no division of opinion here. The community is all united on this. So, this is an all-time great satirical topic,” Laborde said.
Costume designer Shel Roumillat from the New Orleans Costume Center says she can see entire walking krewes of blind, gagged referees.
“If there's one thing that we do well it’s take a bad situation and make fun of it and express our feelings about it through costuming and parading and float building,” Roumillat said.
Costume creator Rain Perez agrees.
“The Who Dat nation is pretty serious about their sports here. They are really taking this to heart. It's personal. It really is,” Perez said.
We don’t know what the no-call themed floats will look like until the parades roll.
“That's something that I can't really tell you. right now. You're just going to wait and see,” Valadie said.