What fundraiser is that? Well, it’s not to benefit Jefferson Davis – that’s for sure.

Here’s an invitation which circulated around the Big Easy’s tonier precincts…

That’s a nice chunk of change for the swells to cough up in order to hobnob with Hizzoner and Carville – particularly since those monies are intended for causes unlikely to bear much fruit – like for example to bankroll a Landrieu impersonation of the doomed Bobby Jindal presidential run in three years.

But a few hours after the swanky fundraiser ends, something less festive is set to occur tonight. You may have seen the preparations being made for it…

They’ve been laying down fencing and preparing a job site for a few days now, and the word is sometime after midnight tonight the Jefferson Davis monument will be removed.

It’s interesting – Mitch Landrieu is no Jimmy Carter. It was Carter, in 1978, who signed the proclamation posthumously restoring Jefferson Davis’ rights as an American citizen…

“In posthumously restoring the full rights of citizenship to Jefferson Davis, the Congress officially completes the long process of reconciliation that has reunited our people following the tragic Civil War.  He served the United States long and honorably as a soldier, a Member of the U.S. House and Senate, and as Secretary of War. General Robert E. Lee’s citizenship was restored in 1976. It is fitting that Jefferson Davis should no longer be singled out for punishment.

“Our Nation needs to clear away the guilts and enmities and recriminations of the past,” Carter concluded, “to finally set at rest the divisions that threatened to destroy our Nation and to discredit the principles on which it was founded. Our people need to turn their attention to the important tasks that still lie before us in establishing those principles for all people.”

It’s one of the more intelligent utterances to come out of Carter’s cranium – and something Landrieu, who sips champagne as the cranes crawl toward Davis’ statue, has no understanding of.

Nothing is healed by the removal of these monuments. The divisions Carter discussed are only deepened by reopening old wounds through erasing our memorials. But that’s what will happen tonight.