Mayor Fenty's wife cries: he is misunderstood

The Mayor's wife, who has been very little in evidence before now, cries to reporters over how her husband is misunderstood. I would attempt a list of some of the people who deserve my tears more than Adrian Fenty, but it is a very long list and I am too tired. Suffice it to say that, like it or not, a mayor's job is not just to do things but to communicate about them with the citizenry — even, dare I say it, consult the citizenry.

Oh, and work with the city council. This mayor has routinely and disgracefully refused to let city agency officials testify at council oversight and legislative hearings. For example, the Mayor's office sent no one to testify in July 2008 on the Domestic Partnership Judicial Determination of Parentage Act — now the nation's strongest parental rights law, thanks to the dogged persistence of Councilmember Phil Mendelson, Professor Nancy Polikoff, Bob Summersgill, and others — yet Fenty's attorney general spent nearly two years obstructing the bill and even tried (unsuccessfully) to get the Bush Administration to take potshots at it. That is no damn way to run a city. Cry me a river.