Compelling and well worth a read --> O’Malley returns to a Baltimore he barely recognizes [View all]

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NinaSophia @ninasophia81
Honest, compelling and well worth a read --> O’Malley returns to a Baltimore he barely recognizes https://www.yahoo.com/politics/martin-omalley-returns-to-a-baltimore-he-barely-117824391151.html?soc_src=unv-sh&soc_trk=tw … via @YahooPolitics





____ Martin O’Malley is an exceptionally composed politician — maybe too composed. He normally speaks in a flat cadence that can feel rehearsed, and in oddly formal language. (He likes to talk about these United States, as if possessed by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.) The New York Times’s Jason Horowitz described O’Malley earlier this week as wearing his smile like a shield.

But that was not the O’Malley who invited me Thursday on a two-hour drive through some of Baltimore’s poorer neighborhoods and grimmest landmarks. Mayors sometimes like to take reporters around their cities so they can show them all the cranes raising up gleaming new office towers and condominiums; O’Malley had in mind a tour through the tragic past, so I could understand what life had been like in this anguished city before he got there, and after.

This O’Malley was shaken. He had canceled his scheduled speeches in Ireland and flown back to Baltimore Tuesday, after news of the rioting and looting reached the world. It wasn’t clear what exactly he was supposed to be doing, so he walked the streets and reassured old friends.

“I had to be here,” he told me in a thick voice. “I couldn’t be away. I mean, I was so sad. I just needed to be home. I’m talking to my kids, and they’re holding the phone up as I’m listening to the mayor talk about what’s going on, and I — I just needed to be home...”

“The events of this week have been totally heartbreaking,” O’Malley told me quietly at one point. “I don’t know any other way to express it.” I wondered which he found more painful — that the city he loved had come unglued, or that others might think he should shoulder the blame...


read more: https://www.yahoo.com/politics/martin-omalley-returns-to-a-baltimore-he-barely-117824391151.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma

related:

Martin O'Malley made an impressive stand this week in the face of potentially withering criticism
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026600084


(Foto: @wjhenn)