Atlanta's Mayor Shirley Franklin was on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher last night.
It's been rare in my life that I've felt proud of one of my representatives at any level of government, but Mayor Franklin has earned my respect and admiration. I did not know of her before she was elected, and was thinking "Shirley Who?" during her campaign, but when she took office and almost immediately addressed Atlanta's aging infrastructure and antiquated combined sewer problems, issues her predecessors made worse by ignoring for years, she earned my initial respect.
Before she took office, Atlanta's city government was a bloated mess with an $82m deficit; now it is running a surplus. Before she took office, the city was seen as hopelessly corrupt (the prior mayor is now in a Federal penitentiary); now it has an ethics plan which, to the surprise of many local sceptics, has yet to embarrass the city. Before she took office, growth was confined to the suburbs; between 2000 and 2004 the city added 13,600 housing units, more than three times what it added in the 1990s.
On Bill Maher, Ms. Franklin, wearing one of her trademark flower pins, seemed strangely subdued. She may not have appreciated some of Maher's blue humor, or else she was repulsed by having to sit next to Neocon David Frum, former Bush speech-writer and inventor of the phrase "axis of evil."
Ms. Franklin was quiet for most of the Iraq conversation, mostly a debate between Frum and Maher, with occasional jabs thrown in by John Legend, on the panel for no apparent reason. Perhaps she was waiting for the conversation to address domestic issues, like urban sprawl. But when she did jump in, asking Frum "What is your solution?" as he was complaining about the House troop withdrawal bill, she managed to make him squirm and stutter without raising her voice or getting confrontational, but simply showing that the Neocons offer no solution other than "stay the course," which obviously is not working.
Well done, Shirley.
It's been rare in my life that I've felt proud of one of my representatives at any level of government, but Mayor Franklin has earned my respect and admiration. I did not know of her before she was elected, and was thinking "Shirley Who?" during her campaign, but when she took office and almost immediately addressed Atlanta's aging infrastructure and antiquated combined sewer problems, issues her predecessors made worse by ignoring for years, she earned my initial respect.
Before she took office, Atlanta's city government was a bloated mess with an $82m deficit; now it is running a surplus. Before she took office, the city was seen as hopelessly corrupt (the prior mayor is now in a Federal penitentiary); now it has an ethics plan which, to the surprise of many local sceptics, has yet to embarrass the city. Before she took office, growth was confined to the suburbs; between 2000 and 2004 the city added 13,600 housing units, more than three times what it added in the 1990s.
On Bill Maher, Ms. Franklin, wearing one of her trademark flower pins, seemed strangely subdued. She may not have appreciated some of Maher's blue humor, or else she was repulsed by having to sit next to Neocon David Frum, former Bush speech-writer and inventor of the phrase "axis of evil."
Ms. Franklin was quiet for most of the Iraq conversation, mostly a debate between Frum and Maher, with occasional jabs thrown in by John Legend, on the panel for no apparent reason. Perhaps she was waiting for the conversation to address domestic issues, like urban sprawl. But when she did jump in, asking Frum "What is your solution?" as he was complaining about the House troop withdrawal bill, she managed to make him squirm and stutter without raising her voice or getting confrontational, but simply showing that the Neocons offer no solution other than "stay the course," which obviously is not working.
Well done, Shirley.
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