Fresh Loaf

SHIRLEY FRANKLIN’S POSTCARD FROM SWITZERLAND: Wish you were here.

(Photo illustration by Andisheh Nouraee & Joeff Davis)

Wealth, neutrality, Alps, chocolate, cuckoo clocks, 74-function pocket knives. Switzerland has it all. This week, it even has our mayor. Fresh from a recent trip to Italy’s beautiful Lake Como, Mayor Franklin flew to Geneva on Sunday for a meeting of the U.N. agency UNITAR. The United Nations Institute of Travel and Recreation? Nope. Actually, it’s the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Franklin is on the board of trustees.

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A friend at the Detroit News spotted my column on Atlanta’s soaring crime rate and Mayor Shirley Franklin’s propensity to get the hell out of town when trouble heats up.

As my column pointed out, the only city that is certifiably more dangerous than Atlanta, according to recent FBI statistics, is Detroit. It seems the mayor there, Kwame Kilpatrick, also has a fondness for travel.

Kilpatrick, like Franklin, has been busy engaging in what the Detroit News calls “exotic travel.” Media reports about his junketing prompted Kilpatrick last month to cancel a trip to Hawaii.

Since the entity formerly known as a daily newspaper in Atlanta has adopted a new role of image polisher for Franklin, there have been nothing but gushing accounts on how wonderful our mayor’s trips have been.

Somehow those schmoozing junkets are supposed to benefit Atlanta’s citizens. Have you noticed any improvement in your lot attributable to the mayor’s high flying and high living? A true leader would be here doing such things as shaking up the sorry management of the police department. There are a lot of tough questions for the mayor – but she has proven skillful at avoiding engagements where she has to answer.

The News explained that Kilpatrick dropped his Hawaii plans because, as the newspaper states, “He’s concerned he might be harassed by reporters.”

No such problem here, where the post-journalism AJC would never be so impolite as to ask Franklin a tough question, and maybe push a little until she answers. The AJC’s retreat from the news business makes it more fun for scribes at CL and the TV stations, but a city without a gutsy daily newspaper is a city in big trouble.

There is one difference between Kilpatrick and Franklin. The Detroit mayor is rallying his city to battle the criminals. He recently declared, “I need, and we need, an aroused, engaged and mobilize community.”

No such leadership here.

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