I guess it’s pick-on-the-New York Times day today, but this love letter to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin couldn’t pass without comment:

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 20 – Hurricane Katrina has given the nation a new political celebrity, the mayor of beleaguered New Orleans. And like they say with pride here about most everything, Mayor C. Ray Nagin is just plain different… [snip]
In some places in the country, mayors pay for big mistakes at election time. Mr. Nagin faces a primary election in February, and for now, the talk here is that he is not in big trouble, that he, like his city, was a victim of Washington and Ms. Blanco, whose reputation has suffered while his seems to be holding.
“You experience accountability in other places,” said Roy W. Fletcher, a political consultant in Baton Rouge. “Here, while everybody wants something from government, nobody expects something from government”… [snip]
But somehow there is a sense of tolerance from his constituents for their mayor, because, they say, at least he tried – considered an accomplishment in their hometown.

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.