America's first big-city woman mayor, Chicago's Jane Byrne, died today. The promise-turned-debacle of her one-term administration is fairly well encapsulated by this six-minute video. As part of her ill-conceived public gesture to move into the Cabrini Green public housing complex, she planned an Easter celebration that began well, and then went all the way bad.
I interviewed Byrne a few years ago, and she still seethed about political slights three decades old.
Jane Byrne—rest, finally, in peace.
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