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Mayor's remark spawns T-shirt craze

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NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Mayor Ray Nagin's Martin Luther King Day remark that New Orleans will once again be a "chocolate city" has spawned a cottage industry of T-shirts.

There are the "Chocolate City Police" shirts that say "We're bitter" on the back, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. And then there are T-shirts that feature Nagin as Willy Wonka.

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Dolph Federico, who peddles the Willy Nagin shirts at imnotchocolate.com, said he has received orders from as far away as Norway and Malaysia.

"No hard feelings, Ray," he said. "We're just trying to have fun."

The mayor's statement, an attempt to deal with complaints that his plans for rebuilding the city would exclude poor blacks, have brought him a lot of attention, probably more than he wanted.

"It will be in his obituary," University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato told the newspaper. "I hate to tell the mayor that, but it will be in his obituary. Hurricane Katrina may be the central part of it, but the 'chocolate city' comments will be in there too."

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