Evan Osnos has a profile in the New Yorker of Chicago’s Mayor Daley, “The Daley Show,” which does a good job of cataloguing the man and all of his frustrating complications. But Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader has a compelling comeback, “Taking the New Yorker for a Ride,” charging that the profile falls for the typically myth-making surrounding the mayor.

My favorite line in Joravsky’s piece? The one citing people’s weakness for the argument that Chicago’s success relative to other rust-belt towns is the result of Daley’s strong-man rule.

But I’ll just ask our visiting correspondents to reconsider the pervasive view that Chicago needs a temperamental tyrant who oversees a corrupt and inefficient regime in order to get anything done.

In the same issue of the Reader, reporter Mick Dumke explores why the time might be right for Daley to be replaced in “Time for a Revolution.” I doubt it, but I hope so.