A Lesson on Racism for Mayor Bloomberg

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176075/lesson-racism-mayor-bloomberg#axzz2eKnhfUsE


Bill de Blasio and his family protest the shutdown of the Long Island College Hospital and Interfaith Hospital (Bill de Blasio/Flickr)

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, like most Americans, doesn’t understand what racism is. Or perhaps he does and is purposefully pretending to be obtuse to score some political points. Either way, his remarks in a recent interview with New York magazine do little more than further confuse the public as to what racism entails by reinforcing a false narrative of equivalency.

Interviewer Chris Smith suggested that the Democratic front-runner in the mayoral race, Bill de Blasio, was running a “class-warfare campaign,” at which point Bloomberg interjected to add, “Class-warfare and racist.” He attempted to clarify, saying:

Well, no, no, I mean* he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote. You tailor messages to your audiences and address issues you think your audience cares about.

*(The “no, no” part was added to the article after protest from the mayor’s office, but it hardly changes anything.)

[marmar]

1. k/r. Bloomberg has plumbed new depths with this latest episode......

....... Desperate and pissed because nobody wants to vote for his hand-picked, corporate candidate.

[xchrom]

2. it's beyond strange to listen to him -- i keep thinking i'll look up

and see a guy with a dead squirrel on his head.

[marmar]

3. Heehee

[brush]

4. Mayoral 3rd terms always seem to get crazy and damage legacies

Koch's third term descended into corruption, as did Sharpe James' of Newark. Coleman Young and Kenneth Gibson, who served even longer in Detroit and Newark, also stayed at the party much too long.

Bloomberg did a good job in replacing "a verb, a noun and 9/11 Guiliani" in his first two terms (some think too good with his anti-smoking and anti-big gulp pushes), but it seems almost like senility is setting in with his bizarre defense of "stop and frisk", a clear 4th Amendment violation, and this latest injection of foolishness into the mayoral race with his racist charge against de Blasio.

I don't know what's happened. It's like he's losing it right before our eyes.

[markpkessinger]

5. Third terms do indeed get crazy ...

. . . which is exactly why New Yorkers voted for term limits TWICE in two elections prior to Bloomberg's run for a third term, only to have
Christine Quinn help to engineer an exception for Bloomberg.