After last week’s terrorist attack on Bourbon Street, which left 14 dead and dozens more injured, public officials were quick to assure visitors that New Orleans was still open for business. And they were true to their word.

Though postponed past its traditional New Year’s Day start time, the Sugar Bowl kicked off the next day at 3 p.m. Even Bourbon Street itself was reopened within 36 hours of the deadly attack.

As the city prepares to host two of the biggest events of the year — the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras, one right after the other — MSNBC columnist and former Times-Picayune op-ed writer Jarvis DeBerry asks how the rush to reopen benefits New Orleanians.

In a city that’s so dependent on tourism, an attitude that “the show must go on” isn’t surprising. Still, it left some New Orleanians expressing a long-standing sorrow that what’s good for the people who visit the city is always prioritized over what’s good for the people who call it home. …

Quickly returning to football and revelry, even as the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office was saying it had more autopsies to conduct and family members to notify, certainly wasn’t done with the interests of residents in mind.

From New Orleans to Asheville, North Carolina, to the islands of Puerto Rico and Maui, this is the bind that locales reliant on tourism often find themselves in after tragedies: how to carve out the time and space to grieve when playing host to company pays the bills.

Read DeBerry’s full column on MSNBC.

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