The state of the city is pretty shitty.

The title says it all.
But you wouldn't know it from what Lovely Warren says.
Tonight, Mayor Warren gave her "state of the city" address.
It should have billed as "The Lovely Warren Feel Good About Me Variety Show."
Undoubtedly, she and her staff had been working on it for weeks.
All that was missing was a theme song, clowns and choreographed dancing on the stage.
The event took place at Wilson Magnet School. The location was carefully chosen because it is Mayor Warren's old stomping ground; it is located in the heart of one of Rochester's black neighborhoods, guaranteed to provide the mayor with a cheerleading squad; and it has a small auditorium, so it would fill to capacity quickly and easily, to be recorded by the cameras of the news crews filming it.
I won't waste my time giving you a blow by blow account of the mayor's address to the citizens of Rochester. You will be able to see it on the city's website, channel 12 or WXXI in full.
Rochester's local newsrag, the Demogogue and Comicon, will undoubtedly praise it. They will probably provide a written transcript online and in tomorrow's hard copy, so you can read it there, as well.
But you will miss the visual effects that way.
What I will say is that the mayor is not personally responsible for Rochester's decay. She inherited this mess from mayors Ryan, Johnson, Duffy and Richards.
Tonight she also took credit for questionable projects that had begun under Duffy and Richards, before she ensconced herself in the mayor's office.
She also very briefly touched upon poverty in Rochester. She hardly mentioned that we are the poorest city in America for its size and that over fifty percent of our children grow up in poverty.
She never mentioned our piss-poor school system, our near moronic school board or our idiotic superintendent of schools. Our school system is the worst in the state, and one of the worst in the country.
The mayor did mention education in the most oblique way possible, that children need access to good schools.
According to Lovely Warren, we are poised to become great again, to reinvent ourselves.
This rhetoric has been used since the Johnson years, with nothing to show for it but worsening urban conditions all around.
It is a catchy phrase.
But in one year, Lovely Warren has made it all better.
In just one year.
From her mouth to God's ear.
Mayor Warren has been known to tell some whoppers in her first year in office.
At least she was consistent tonight.
And those people intimately connected to her, dependent on the city's largesse or on the city payroll, cheered.