That's the Chicago way

Ah, I've just run across a reminder of the dulcet tones that characterise my native* city's political culture, which I have to say that I've gotten rather out of touch with.

From a recent debate in Chicago's mayoral election:

[Carol] Moseley Braun, who had hoped she would win over most of the city's African-American vote, was angered by a comment by one of the marginal contestants, the community activist Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins, who said she had not heard much from Moseley Braun in the past seven years.

Moseley Braun responded in the no-holds-barred way for which the city is notorious: "Patricia, just because you didn't know who I was for the last seven years is because you were on crack." Van Pelt-Watkins has been drug-free for at least two decades.

Sweet home Chicago.

*OK, so I grew up in the suburbs, but I took my first breaths in Cook County and always identified with the broader term 'Chicagoland'.