Funny how Rita was the one, not Tom Benson, who appeared with Tagliabue, Fielkow and others to reassure Louisiana the Saints weren't leaving after Benson stated the Saints were now a Texas team...

Then there were all these news articles talking about her business acumen, her creativity in thinking out of the box in making the Voodoo such a success...

Then Gayle comes into the picture and then all of a sudden there's articles citing former/dismissed (bitter) employees dissing on Rita...

Then one by one they're dismissed - Arnie Felkow who openly questioned Benson about the move, ex-aide Rodney Henry who Gayle allegedly harassed racially, and his adopted daughter and her two kids...

And everyone that was in Benson's inner circle is now gone, his former personal assistant (whom Benson later referred to as "just a porter"); refusing to give him severance after Gayle insisted he also be dismissed (and won that case as he was paid through the Saints payroll and had to waive his employee rights to work for the Saints (should be illegal, non-binding))...

I'm not saying Rita was an angel, and I don't really want to dis on Benson in the two weeks of mourning, but there's been a lot of distortion of history during this tribute period of the facts by a compliant local media who want to stay in the good graces of team ownership, inner circle, VP of Communications Greg Bensel and there's a clear, coordinated shift that took place with regards to the public image of Benson's previous family and this, in my view, reminds me of some kind of Roman coup d'etat of the Saints and bears vigilance...

My late friend, Hagan and I often discussed this, even laughed at the hypocrisy of the local media in the 180s of Rita, Gayle et al public images...