If by "us" you mean them, maybe...

James Gill writing just prior to the 2002 Mayoral election (February 13, 2002) makes a shrewd remark about his own paper's enthusiasm for one of the candidates.

Race does indeed loom large in the race. Nagin would not have run first in the primary without a huge chunk of the white vote, and his late surge must have owed a lot to The Times-Picayune, which is regarded in some quarters as the voice of Uptown and the old line.

The paper not only endorsed Nagin two weeks out, but gave him an extra plug on the front page election eve.

Nagin, moreover, is against raising the minimum wage in Orleans Parish and could therefore be portrayed as the plutocrat’s choice. He is, as vice president and general manager of Cox Cable and co-owner of the Brass hockey team, quite a big cheese himself, albeit a self-made one.

After the election (March 1, 2002) Gill made a second reference to what he clearly saw as an over-the-top move on the part of the T-P editors.

The motions included an admirably thorough page-one account in this newspaper yesterday of the candidates’ professional experience and campaign pledges. Fair enough; readers deserve objective coverage, even if it is somewhat overshadowed by the legend at the top of the page that screams "Nagin for Mayor" and refers readers to the latest glowing endorsement inside.

Some readers might find this confusing, but no matter, for the election appears to be over and the newspaper has got its wish anyway.

It will be devoutly wished around here that Nagin lives up to his editorial billing, and he certainly appears to have the talent required. His campaign missteps may soon be forgotten. Now, he will have a chauffeur, and thus no need to fix traffic tickets. He will also have the services of financial advisers who really did complete the requirements for CPA certification.

But, once again, we can only wait to see if the candidate who talks the reform talk will walk the reform walk once he arrives at City Hall. Nagin is hardly the first to arrive at City Hall vowing to end patronage. Mayor Morial did the same thing eight years ago, and his friends sure will miss him when he’s gone.

So, in this weekend's column where we find James Gill literally calling Nagin an "idiot"... twice... in addition to this text,

At least we can now put to rest the theory that Nagin's judgment was sound until he was unhinged by Katrina. This (Hawaii) trip took place in 2004, when Nagin still had us fooled into thinking his administration had restored integrity after the cronyism and larceny of the Marc Morial years.

Morial is looking better these days. Not only were the feds unable to implicate him in the scandals that surrounded his administration, but he was never spotted mooching with a lei around his neck.

We wonder, specifically who the fooled "us" he's referring to is comprised of. I suppose Gill displays a bit of faux gallantry here in seeming to include himself among the "fooled". I'm not sure I'm buying it, though. Establishment media, with the T-P leading the charge, pretty much created the Nagin candidacy out of thin air in 2002. They did so because Nagin best represented the ascendant conservative, privatizing, "run gubmint like a bidness" philosophy of the paper and its publisher. But the political rallying call for this nonsense was primarily "ethics reform" which we were told Nagin would bring us because he was a "businessman" and we all know nothing is more ethicsy than a businessman.

But given Gill's prior statements which suggest he may have known better all along, I wonder if he shouldn't be applying the term "idiot" to more than just Nagin these days.