Braun Supporters Protest Sun-Times, Steinberg
UPDATED 12/28/10 2:10 p.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Supporters of mayoral candidate Carol Moseley Braun protested in front of the Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday, over a column in which Neil Steinberg dismissed her candidacy as not having "a snowball's chance in hell."
LISTEN: Newsradio 780's Mike Krauser Reports
Podcast
The Monday column, titled "Carol, I Miss You Already," mocked the idea of a Braun administration, and treated a Rahm Emanuel victory in the mayoral race as a foregone conclusion.
"I'm half tempted to go into denial, after Emanuel is elected, and write columns tracking, not his advent, but the lurches and stumbles of an imaginary Mayor Moseley Braun," Steinberg wrote.
The column also dismissed a poll by N'Digo magazine that showed Braun polling ahead of Emanuel, on the grounds that its sample was "overwhelmingly African-American women, most of them friends of the publisher."
Steinberg defended Monday's column as honest, accurate, fair and funny.
"I think it's the worst sort of racism to think that certain groups can't be criticized because they're going to collapse into a sobbing heap," he said.
The column painted Moseley Braun in a less than flattering light, suggesting a certain amount of cluelessness.
"She represents the ego-maniacal muddle that Chicago black leadership has slid into, where calls for imaginary and self-destructive racial solidarity trump minor concerns like reason or history," he wrote.
Outside the Sun Times building, Dr. Leon Finney, a long-time activist in the black community, said:
"To ridicule someone on the basis of gender and race and call that criticism is an observation, obviously, that's made by someone who is ill informed."
Braun, a former U.S. Senator, is up against Emanuel, Gery Chico, U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), city Clerk Miguel Del Valle, and several others. Another high-profile candidate, state Sen. Rev. James Meeks (D-Chicago), withdrew last week.
