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The International Writers Magazine:NY Politics

New York Promises to Be Different
• Dean Borok
New York mayor-elect Bill De Blasio is already generating a cottage industry of fear and derision among white ethnic New Yorkers and the sources of media power, and the fun hasn’t even begun to start. For starters there is his wife Chirlane McCray, who promises to be a full-voiced partner in his mayoralty.

Dean

I already got a lifetime of experience dealing with full-voiced women from Brooklyn, and the hot air expended in one day is enough to break off an iceberg. In terms of Ms. McCray, I finally found her motivation for blasting Bloomberg as a “patriarch” during the mayoral campaign. It seems that Bloomberg passed a rule that school children could not bring their phones into the classroom, for obvious reasons. The mothers went berserk, but he refused to budge on the issue.

One evening, at a cocktail reception at Gracie Mansion, McCray, who was the wife of the then-Public Advocate, buttonholed Bloomberg and tried to break his chops yet again over the cell phone issue, which already had to be a sickening subject to him. So he just walked away. Incensed at being ignored, she later told New York magazine, “I have never been treated like that in my life”.

Well, I Never! This is shaping up to be a W.C. Fields movie in advance. She nursed a grudge against Bloomberg for years, waiting to get the last word. I am reminded of the scene from Martin Scorsese’s darkly prophetic “The King of Comedy”, where the Johnny Carson character, played by Jerry Lewis is accosted as he walks down Fifth Avenue by a portly lady talking on a public phone. “Jerry!” she exclaims, “Omigod I love you so much. Jerry, could you please just say something to my brother? It would mean so much to him!”

Jerry got his own problems, so he just ignores her and walks away. Infuriated at being snubbed, she starts screaming radically, “You son-of –a-bitch, I hope you get CANCER!” Thirty years later this scene still resonates with me as being Soooo New York! I sometimes wonder if Scorsese’s best films weren’t about gangsters at all, but his wacky New York comedies like “King of Comedy” and “After Hours”.

Of course, Bloomberg’s just as bad, accusing De Blasio of “running a racist campaign” for using his African wife and mixed-race kids in his campaign ads, to build an electoral base. All things being equal, nobody in New York has any class, and I can back up that assertion with eight million examples. I came to New York in search of some kind of fashion Valhalla, and I ended up working for a gang of idiots and thieves (and I say that with true affection. Once you get used to something, it’s the same as loving it, and you can get used to anything. Stupid-ass New Yorkers have inspired a whole school of literary writing going back generations). Bloomberg should never have lost his cool with De Blasio. He’s too big a man for that.

The Post is already having a field day with De Blasio. Today’s issue had a story that somehow tied him to a non-profit that tries to extend city services to ex-cons (http://nypost.com/2013/11/21/de-blasio-hearing-plenty-of-policing-advice-from-ex-cons/). The reporter asked some of these charming guys what their suggestions to the next mayor should be, and the responses were naturally all along the lines of the cops getting off their back and, naturally, end the police stop-and-frisk, which was impeding their freedom of movement. The quotes from these guys were the funniest thing I have ever read, and the Post somehow managed to make it seem as though these were De Blasio’s advisers. If the Post keeps tying him up with hysterical stories like this, De Blasio will be cooked before he even gets started.

Of course New York has a long history of decimating politicians with humor, going back to Thomas Nast’s caricatures of Mayor William Tweed in the 1870’s. De Blasio won by a large majority, but if you look at a precinct map of the city, all the white areas of Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens went for the Republican, Lhota. These are the same neighborhoods that threw out Dinkins in 1992 and kept the city Republican for 20 years. They vote strictly on the basis of race, and white New Yorkers are absolutely livid at De Blasio, his wife and even his kids. I asked this lady, “What do you have against his kids. They’re cute!” “No they’re not,” she exclaimed with the finality of a steel bear tap springing shut.

I have a lot of complimentary opinions about the Bloomberg administration. He has always been reasonable and thoughtful. A lesser mayor might have mishandled the Occupy Wall Street movement and put the screws to the occupiers, with explosive consequences, but Bloomberg handled it with serene forbearance. He ran New York like a business; in fact he just announced that his stewardship was ending with a balanced budget. For Bloomie, everything is about the balance sheet.

That’s all very nice, except that most business models involve screwing the employees so that the profits can be extracted from the top end. That’s how the thing works. The problem with the Democrats is that, whereas under the Republican system all of the cream gets skimmed off the top, under Democratic administrations, leaks start appearing in the distribution of resources and serious amounts of wealth start to get siphoned away, like a Nigerian oil pipeline.
© Dean Borok Nov 23rd 2013
dean@200motels.net

Bill's My Boy
Dean Borok

Well, New York City mayoral election day is here, and it is the only election that I consider to be REALLY REAL. This is it, folks, the essence of world political culture reduced to a grease stain on the bottom of a cardboard pizza box.

Latin Dancing Across 110th Street
Dean Borok

I have asserted all along that New Yorkers should be compelled to attend charm school, so I decided to take my own advice. The place I chose, the Lorenz Latin Dance Studio, is located in Spanish Harlem
Still Dancin'
Dean Borok

Anybody who wants to get a thumbnail of the changing demographic of American society would do well to take a ride uptown to the Lorenz Latin Dance Studio on 110th Street
El Watusi
Dean Borok

I finally figured out a system for keeping my feet moving at Lorenz Latin Dance Studio’s Friday night dance party. I stuff live M-80 firecrackers into my shoes and light the fuse.

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