The Issue is not so simple
The junior senator from New York is agusty lady. She is known to be an aggressive speaker and a good orator.. Yet she made a remark about the House Republican Leadership running like a "plantation". This remark on Martin Luther King Day has been considered inappropriate and has stirred a lot of dust. She added: You know what I mean.
I think this remark is being twisted out of shape. Leaving aside the appropriateness or otherwise of this remark, the fact is that the REPUBLICANS not Democrats were the part y of Emancipation and so Clinton's remark is just incorrect. Of course,she was not making an academic point but a political one and hence everyone got onto her case.
Mayor Nagin and his remark about a chocolate New Orleans. I may have got it wrong, but is it not true that 3 Congressional Districts have already lost their Afro American majority. If this continues to happen will it not once again disenfranchaise Afro Americans.
From this point of view, Mayor Nagin was making aserious political point and there is nothing wrong in what he said.