THAT WAS A LAME EXCUSE FORTY YEARS AGO.

Detroit mayor Coleman Young probably first made a schtick out of "All My Troubles Reflect Your Racism."  Not that it helped: the productive people kept leaving, and the city ultimately ran out of taxes to collect and excuses to make.  Not that Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot learned the right lesson, her schtick is "Most of My Troubles Reflect Your Racism and Sexism."  She's even worse-tempered than Coleman Young was, but she has the black card to play, the woman card to play, and the lesbian card to play, and apparently that should get her a free pass.  "Lightfoot said her critics are motivated to speak out because they 'don’t like to see a woman assume power.'"  It's not your plumbing, lady, it's your incompetence.  Or, as Legal Insurrection's Mary Chastain puts it,  "Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP."  It's simple, really.  "This is just how incompetent people behave. They don’t do the job and when people notice, they blame other people, call them racist, etc…." Losing skippers blame the crew, the wind, the race committee.  Losing scholars blame the referees, the intellectual biases of their discipline, the tenure committee.  Losing politicians might benefit by an affirmative action asterisk.  Not that 104 of the mayor's constituents, 19 now deceased, had a happy Independence Day weekend.  Chicago continues to become the New Detroit.