Come on Man! The New Orleans Times Picayune called it tough talk from the Mayor but is sounds like suspended reality for everyone who finds the crime wave in New Orleans totally unacceptable.  The Mayor's statement is more of the same from a guy who finds his comfort zone sitting in the crowd complaining about crime from the outside instead of getting the right people in position to bring the professionalism he so often says is his hallmark.  The failure of this New Orleans city administration to wrap up crime and send it packing says volumes about how the mayor views crime and his role in general. The City has had more than its share of crime and an education system that left little resources on the table for under served populations.  But as crime often does, its creeping shadow into neighborhoods of privilege have prompted the mayor to ridicule his city as having a "culture of crime." Come on man! Statements like this may be psychologically comforting and it may be politically smart to play like one of the people by criticizing "the City" for its culture but that is far from leading.  Killings on Canal St, the French Quarter, the Lower Garden District, Bywater, Marigny, New Orleans East, are THE agenda not fodder for political rhetoric. These shameful acts of violence didn't measure priority status when they were in the realm of run down tenement slums and where the killing was confined to seedy zones. But it did bother professionals and big business decades ago, who left in droves to built their corporate skyscrapers in Houston and Atlanta, places where they could encourage a strong education to lift all of society, while undergirding strong, diverse andy prospering economies.  Not everyone grew up like the few who remain in the city and send their kids to schools behind walls. Smart cities build mass transit, and better neighborhoods and erect ladders to success for all, yes, even for minority populations who, when all else fails, kill us and kill each other.  Smart cities are not about tall talking but on the ground action. That is what leadership is all about, not whining with repeated rhetoric about what a culture of crime we face by the city's fast talking mayor.  Quite frankly, saying that we are all in this together and rolling out school yard examples to fight crime misses the "feel good" boat and makes the frog boil.