Tuesday, October 29, 2013

THIS HERE'S A ZOO AND THE KEEPER AIN'T YOU/AND I'M SICK OF IT, I'M SICK OF YOU.

The Wall Street Journal is really pissed Bill de Blasio is cruising into the New York mayoralty:
Occupy City Hall
...The Occupy movement that in 2011 pitched street camps in the U.S. from Wall Street to San Francisco posited a tale of two Americas and class resentment unseen for many decades. The movement faded, but if the opinion polls are right, New York voters are about to elect the Occupy movement to run America's largest city.
As with Obama, no election is legitimate if the Democrat wins or is expected to.
The Big Apple is on the verge of electing a man whose explicit agenda is the repudiation of the conservative reforms achieved by a generation of city leaders from both parties, which transformed New York from a terrifying urban joke into the nation's municipal crown jewel.
Thereafter, we get a reading from The Gospel According to Rudy and scary puppets labeled "Living Wage" and "Rent Control."

But not once does Journal address the question of why New Yorkers are prepared to vote for de Blasio -- except for this pathetic specimen:
Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee, is leading Republican Joe Lhota by more than 40 points. Conventional wisdom holds that this is happening mainly because New Yorkers are "tired" of Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Losing access to 16-ounce cups of soda is insufficient reason for what is likely to happen to New York.
I've been in exile a couple of years but I can say this with confidence: The soda thing isn't why the citizens are turning toward de Blasio. (For one thing, de Blasio supports the soda ban.)

If New Yorkers are tired of Bloomberg, it may be because between him and Giuliani they've had nearly twenty years of crackdown government and they're sick of it. It doesn't help that Bloomberg acts as if he's just as sick of them. Last week, for example, he altered the terms of the Met Museum's lease so that they can charge a flat fee (if you can call $25 flat), which may end the possibility of cheap admission to one of the world's great museums in one of the world's great cities -- where many residents can't afford it (and Joe Lhota doesn't seem to care about that either).

The Journal also complains that de Blasio "has held no real job," but after three terms of a guy who's a massive business success and treats his constituents like kitchen help, that's not much of a knock.

Polls show that citizens are divided over stop and frisk, but the Journal might take a hint from the fact that a clear majority of them are willing to throw it over and even risk a return to the horrors of CBGB and Mean Streets if it means an end to a corporate governance model that's always warning it can continue to provide good services only by selling out the city's patrimony. If they can also get a thumb in the eye of the suck-up press that enables it, so much the better.

I'm two hundred miles away but if de Blasio wins I'm gonna party.

UPDATE. Oh, as if I needed another reason to celebrate, Ron Radosh at PJ Media:
Whether you call it the new Popular Front uniting unabashed Marxists, revolutionary activists, and liberal Democrats, as [Sol] Stern does, or a “new New Left,” as [Tom] Hayden does, it threatens the well-being of our entire country. We may not live in New York City, but we cannot ignore what is happening there.
Yeah, when you watch TV shows set in New York, you won't be able to relax -- you'll be thinking, "The whole thing is run by commies!" Plus when you go there on business, you'll have to worry about squeegee men nationalizing your wallet.

UPDATE 2. Har, hellslittlestangel in comments, "The Journal doesn't give Giuliani enough credit. Thanks to his reforms, murder rates are at their lowest since the 1960s in the entire country." And tigrismus on the Journal's gripe that de Blasio "has held no real job": "The Journal author wrote this in rivets." Hey, be nice: There's a good chance whichever factotum wrote that editorial does cardio kick-boxing on his lunch breaks.

Also amusing: Wingnuts hung up on the fact that de Blasio expressed admiration for the Sandinistas, for God's sake, instead of the Contras as a true Reaganite would. "Bill de Blasio remains a fan of burning synagogues and persecuting Jews," babbles Daniel Greenfield  at FrontPageMag. "So it seems a fair question: Is Bill de Blasio still a Sandinista at heart?" asks Matthew Hennessey at City Journal. Must be tough having to go out at Halloween dressed as Daniel Ortega and find nobody's scared of you or even knows why they're supposed to be.

Try something else, fellas -- hey, did you know his wife is black? It may come to that, or to the shctick Paul Mirengoff thought was killer at Power Line back in August:
Public Advocate Bill Di Blasio is running because he doesn’t think there’s anyone sufficiently Progressive in the field. He rides his bicycle through the hip Brooklyn brownstone belt trolling for voters and needs no prompting to tell you that he’s Italian and his wife is African-American.
Yeah, why would anyone in New York go for a guy who rides a bike in Brooklyn? That's like eating pastrami without mayonnaise.

123 comments:

  1. tigrismus11:24 PM

    The Journal also complains that di Blasio "has held no real job,"


    The Journal author wrote this in rivets.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DocAmazing11:47 PM

    I always thought that good, clean, right-thinking Heartlanders were supposed to be at best suspicious of New York City. Next you'll tell me that diBlasio has his own brand of salsa.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well really it's not like the editors of the Journal actually have real jobs - well not unless you call getting shiny knees blowing Murdoch a real job.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AGoodQuestion1:16 AM

    Submitted for your approval, Kevin Cullen, who quite understandably is showing more enthusiasm for the Big Apple mayoral race than the Beantown one. In the latter, after all, there's a certain retro whimsy to the Irish vs Irish rivalry, but a depressing already done sense. Also Cullen's own paper, the Globe, is pretty much all in for John Connally, the somewhat more corporatist of the candidates.


    Speaking of corporatism, after all these years it does seem to be choking the life out of New York. I mean, I appreciate the fact that Bloomberg, unlike Giuliani, doesn't follow up cop shootings of unarmed black dudes with "ha ha", but twelve years is a lot of mileage to get out of that. So the odds look good to me that even if de Blasio gets eaten alive and lasts only one term, he'll leave the city in more interesting shape.

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  5. Clio's Bitch1:49 AM

    The ability of the Right to transfigurate history into a series of proleptic caricatures --like some demented Harry Potter wizard (not a witch, because we know how they feel about gender politics) tooling around with his not-at-all phallic-psychic-pacifier-cum-wand-- never ceases to amaze.



    It'd be like a major leftie site/group decrying the historical spectre of the Croix-de-Feux.



    Harry Turtledove ought to watch his back. The timeline is getting all kajiggered.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Spaghetti Lee1:51 AM

    New York City Public Advocate is more of a hobby, really. Like watercolor painting or something. We all know that the only real jobs on the face of the earth involve the further enrichment of millionaires.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Spaghetti Lee2:06 AM

    Question from a non-native: Haven't the Lhota-voting Archie Bunkers, Dick Youngs, and Hard Hat Rioters been priced out of the city and into a Florida retirement home by now? Aside from the millionaires and bootlickers, does Lhota have a constituency? Who does he think is buying his and the Post's "I'm just a regulah guy and I danno about dis De Blasio fella, sounds like a commie" routine?


    Larger question: Why does the New York Post continue to exist?

    ReplyDelete
  8. hellslittlestangel2:21 AM

    To answer both questions: Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx are full of people who buy the Post.

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  9. smut clyde3:51 AM

    The Big Apple is on the verge of electing a man whose explicit agenda is the repudiation of the conservative reforms
    We seem to be back in "Dissolve the electorate and appoint a new one" territory.

    ReplyDelete
  10. smut clyde4:04 AM

    the new Popular Front [...] threatens the well-being of our entire
    country. We may not live in New York City, but we cannot ignore what is
    happening there.

    So what does the wee numpty want? Cancellation of the mayoral election if the right outcome cannot be guaranteed? These PJMedia people are not clear on the concept of 'democracy'.

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  11. hellslittlestangel4:49 AM

    The city's murder rate is at its lowest since the 1960s. This plunge is
    the direct result of police reforms begun under Mr. Giuliani...



    The Journal doesn't give Giuliani enough credit. Thanks to his reforms, murder rates are at their lowest since the 1960s in the entire country.

    ReplyDelete
  12. bulbul5:20 AM

    "The whole thing is run by commies!"
    Well, some TV shows set in NYC are actually filmed in Toronto, so...

    ReplyDelete
  13. GabrielRatchet5:56 AM

    Well, that and Murdoch has enough money to run the damn thing as a loss-leader in order to maintain a presence in the country's largest media market.

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  14. chuckling6:52 AM

    The suck up press that enables it. True that. Although stop and frisk gets a few pixels, though mainly because Prominent People are horrified it may end, I've seen absolutely nothing about the general conversion into a police state that's taken place here since 9/11, even though it was on full display during the brutal crackdown on Occupy Wall Street. People, and by "people" I mean minorities, are routinely searched when entering the subway. And there's a policy known as "too many black people in one place" that has gotten no press at all. If you go to a public event where there will be too many black people in one place such as a concert or Carnival event at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, every single person will frisked and have their bags searched on entering. If too many black people are in one place spontaneously, such as sometimes happens in a particular part of the amusement park at Coney Island, the police will forcibly evict them. And these are just things I've personally witnessed. Considering how little I get around, odds are overwhelming it's just the tip of the iceberg. Rule of law, to the extent it ever existed, is something that only exists on tv.

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  15. The extras in the background always give it away, mumbling "Rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga…eh."

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  16. pacifier-cum-wand


    heh

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  17. free ones on the 7 train…for the taking.

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  18. mortimer20007:41 AM

    As we all know, government jobs, elected offices, and paid political work of any kind are not "real jobs." The Journal made this very point about Paul Ryan during the last presidential election, I'm sure of it. It's similar to their theory that certain people aren't "real Americans," and Bill di Blasio isn't one of those either.

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  19. redoubt7:59 AM

    "Git a rope!"

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  20. mortimer20008:12 AM

    too many black people in one place


    I believe this was covered in rules 10c thru 10e of Derbyshire's Directions to White People.

    10c. If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.

    10d. Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

    10e. If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

    ReplyDelete
  21. BigHank538:24 AM

    What does he want? What every true conservative wants: the return of a formal aristocracy. Where being the right person will let you run down serf children in the street and blame them for getting in the way. Where you can fuck your cook's thirteen year old daughter and fire his ass--without a reference--if he dares to complain. Where the things you deserve are yours by right instead being grudging doled out in exchange for money.


    The only really amazing part of it is that this ink-stained cretin somehow imagines being a courtier will be an improvement. Maybe he should have read some historical novels instead of Atlas Shrugged.

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  22. Derelict8:26 AM

    The fact that DiBlasio is swinging along on a 40-point lead doesn't faze these fools even slightly. When your candidate and your agenda are being that soundly rejected by the voters, it's usually time to retreat for a bit. Maybe ponder just what it might take to keep the populace from storming Wall Street with pitchforks and torches.

    But, alas, if you're a brave conservative, you double-down on the crazy and then screech at the crowd that it's their fault for wanting freedom.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Helmut Monotreme8:54 AM

    Yes they goddamn well do. Look at Michigan. They want the ability to nullify elections they don't like so they can install 'city managers' to sell off everything that makes the city worth living in.

    ReplyDelete
  24. ojhn148:57 AM

    I'm in exile from NYC too, but I'm moving back in the next year or so, and I find the news that the Met MIGHT charge a mandatory insanely high admission fee very alarming. An outrage.
    As high school student and poor college and grad student in NYC, and then in lean years that followed, I found that the fact that I could get into the Met for cheap one of the greatest things about the city.Don't want to get melodramatic, but near-free access to the Met got me through some very hard emotional times.
    Anyway, a mandatory fee would be absolutely disgusting -- contrary not only to decency, but also to culture. The evil fucking rich barbarians are in charge. They have no values.

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  25. This election is one of those where I suddenly understand why white suburban voters get hysterical about races that don't involve them. Boston is a major part--if not the major part--of everyone's life around here econmically and socially and yet we can only stand around and gawp at the election for Mayor.


    I really thought the Haitian American candidate was a shoe-in (naively) and she actually is like a mirror image of diBlasio in that she is married to a white Southie Irish family.


    Connally and the other guy, who I heard interviewed, started out sounding just as retro as you say but during their interviews they both expressed astonishingly refreshing pro-teacher/public school (anti charter) attitudes and some other stuff that really sounded good.

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  26. Top rated for proleptic.

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  27. redoubt9:00 AM

    So what does the wee numpty want? Cancellation of the mayoral election if the right outcome cannot be guaranteed?


    Paging Mr. Giuliani. . .Mr. Rudolph Giuliani. . . .

    ReplyDelete
  28. This, this, this.

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  29. When you point this out I'm rather surprised that Bloomberg didn't institute positive sumptuary laws --not forbidding AA and hispanic people from wearing upper class clothes but ordering them to do so to keep the theme park quality of Times Square hopping. But maybe he worried they'd make the rubes and hicks from out of town feel conspicuously underdressed if he did so?

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  30. I read that this morning and although I wasn't surprised it strikes me as yet another sign that Bloomberg and the Met just have no idea who goes there and how small the 1 percent are. I haven't been to the Natural History Museum in years, and its my favorite museum (I've never taken my children there and they are in their late teens) because the prices are just crazy. By the time you are talking about taking a family of four into something you are well up into the 60-100 dollar range.


    Do these goobers really think that even wealthy people will pay 25 dollars per head to go into the MET? Its going to be mighty deserted. But presumably they will make it up in tax dollars levied on the entire population--the population who then can't get into it or are only let in on scheduled school trips once every few years?

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  31. At least DiBlasio can claim to have saved a gay person from the gayness. Guiliani famously lived with two gay guys after one of his marriages broke up. If not personally responsible for turning thousands of women off heterosexuality with his revolting, shark like, grin and horrid comb over. Surely saving one gay woman from sin is pretty impressive to your heartland homophobe? Or do they feel its too time consuming and inefficient to have to marry them to convert?

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  32. redoubt9:15 AM

    I have a twist on this theory. Murdoch is powerful in Australia and the UK (see first his denunciation, then support, then denunciation of Blair and Gordon Brown) so he's used to politicians coming to him on bended knee. Then he gets to New York, buys the Post, and then the WSJ, and what does he get out of it? A city with Bloomberg, a rival media mogul, in the mayor's chair.
    When we joke about "not being able to buy that kind of influence, in his case it's actually true.

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  33. As we know from those old Pace commercials, salsa made in New York City is particularly suspect among Real Americans.

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  34. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps10:21 AM

    "In New York City, rule of law, to the extent it ever existed, is something that nowadays exists only on tv and in the minds of a few special Manhattanites, almost all of whom live somewhere between 34th street and 96th."


    That's been the modus operandi of the last 20 years at City Hall: make lower and central Manhattan attractive to tourists, commuters and millionaires, and ignore Harlem and the other four boroughs and hope for gentrification.

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  35. sharculese10:23 AM

    Harry Potter and the Chamber of David Barton was my favorite of those books!

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  36. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps10:33 AM

    Lhota could have a fairly large Staten Island constituency, but being the former MTA director, a lot of residents blame him for the Verrazano bridge toll hike. He's probably going to be the first R candidate in modern times to lose Staten Island because of it.

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  37. Halloween_Jack11:08 AM

    He dresses on both sides!

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  38. Halloween_Jack11:10 AM

    I honestly have to wonder if the real goal of the plan is to reduce demand from the proletariat so that it's more easily rentable for wedding receptions for the swells.

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  39. Halloween_Jack11:19 AM

    De Blasio is running on principle in a city that longs for a little more of that.


    I like that.

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  40. catclub11:19 AM

    Been to Disney World or some low quality imitation thereof, lately? I suspect prices are far higher than $25. My example: Georgia Aquarium $37 per.

    Amusement parks seem really pricey to me, but they are often full of people, who then buy the overpriced drinks as well. And they do not _look_ like the 1%.

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  41. Halloween_Jack11:22 AM

    I'm diverted from saying anything much about this whole Fear-of-a-Non-Honky-By-Marriage-Mayor thing by the horrid suggestion that someone does eat pastrami with mayo.

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  42. whetstone11:37 AM

    Why does it continue to exist? Patronage. It's blowing through $50 million a year and has lost more than half its subscribers in six years.


    Well patronage and the epic-trolling sports headlines. Even the liberal Sandinista DeBlasio voters I know in NYC enjoy those.

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  43. Mooser11:50 AM

    "That's like eating pastrami without mayonnaise."


    Pastrami with mayonnaise, as I'm sure I don't need to remind you, is not kosher. And eating them consecutively, so you can taste them when you burp, counts, too.

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  44. XeckyGilchrist11:51 AM

    Were those the commercials that showed how superior their own salsa was because it came from happy restaurants full of white people?

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  45. Mooser11:53 AM

    "I'm in exile from NYC too, but I'm moving back in the next year or so,"


    I left in '70, so I can tell you from recent experience; don't!

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  46. XeckyGilchrist11:54 AM

    For once, nobody can rejoin with "beats workin'."

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  47. Mooser11:57 AM

    BTW, "Jeremiah's Vanishing New York" is a wonderful website, and it is linked in the convenient list in the right-hand sidebar. If you are, like me dyslexic, just Google it.

    ReplyDelete
  48. whetstone11:58 AM

    The Koch reforms suffered a setback under the one-term mayoralty of
    David Dinkins in the early 1990s, with the city's daily life sinking so low
    that the New York Post pleaded on its front page, "Dave, Do Something!"


    I am genuinely curious about the opinions of New Yorkers who are not paid to spout the company line, as to whether Dinkins was as bad as all that or whether his history has been, um, whitewashed.

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  49. I believe it was grizzled Texas cowboys out on the range. Pace, not Chi-chi's.

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  50. dstatton12:00 PM

    Davis Koch is on the board of the Met; can't he find a billion or so in the sofa?

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  51. tigrismus12:07 PM

    How about "works beatin'?"

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  52. XeckyGilchrist12:26 PM

    Oh, right, I found the "git a rope" ad. I'd just gotten the Chi-Chi's gringo crap confused with it.

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  53. Budbear12:54 PM

    Things are changing here. Obama actually won the borough in 2012. The population is getting younger and it's not just ex-Brooklynites fleeing from the blahs. And you're correct about the MTA thing, but not just the toll issue. Public transit is abysmal here compared to the other boroughs and Lhota is the face of that problem.

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  54. redoubt1:03 PM

    This also applies to my hometown, which ends south of Soldier Field and west of the United Center, with a small island of culture around Obama's house. Residents of that city only make the news as shooters or shootees.

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  55. jmcornwell1:06 PM

    Di Blasio might not have held a real job, but it seems he's about to get a real job. More power to him if he can maintain the low crime rate and bring the prices down at the Met. He can't be any worse than Bloomberg.

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  56. Jay B.1:14 PM

    It's fashionable and all to point out that NYC is so different than anywhere that of course they'd choose the semi-socialist, but of course, the city hasn't elected one since LaGuardia or so -- but more than that it's that these assholes are so alienated from the normal America that the vast majority of us actually live in (the urban, diverse, more tolerant one that we're told isn't the "Real" one because a shrinking minority of angry shut-ins are being told about it on the radio), they lack the basic resources to understand what's happening. The GOP is still potent and dangerous, but, as is the cliche, their future is basically what's already happened to them in California. Within a decade of passing punitive measures against Latinos and gutting the education system here, it became a big blue state and a decade after that, actually has a Supermajority of Democrats in the legislature. It took 20 years.


    It may just turn out that, eventually, voters just don't like being abused for their own good.

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  57. crosspalms1:15 PM

    Yo, WSJ, don't look here, the terrifying urban joke is in your hand.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Glock H. Palin, Esq.1:19 PM

    Because god knows there aren't any latino communities in New York.

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  59. The sets I've been on ask extras to use the word "rhubarb." Except in Quebec, where they mumble "Jean Beliveau...et le but!"

    ReplyDelete
  60. BadExampleMan1:31 PM

    Not Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Horowitz? Or Harry Potter and the Order of the Teabag?

    ReplyDelete
  61. Glock H. Palin, Esq.1:32 PM

    10c. If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find
    out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.


    How would that even work?


    "Hello, Seaworld? Yes, I'm thinking of taking the family on an outing this month, but I can't seem to find the blackness forecast on your website. No, I said "blackness forecast". BLACK. NESS. FORE. CAST. Look, just let me talk to your manager."

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  62. glennisw1:36 PM

    Actually, it CAN be kosher if it's kosher pastrami and kosher mayo. There's nothing inherently non-kosher about the combo of pastrami and mayo - mayonnaise is not dairy. But there is, of course, a cultural perception of pastrami and mayo being....er....not quite right.

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  63. Squeegee Men and The Friskers2:02 PM

    Now that Lou Reed is dead, The Republicans can claim his support for their candidate.

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  64. realinterrobang2:10 PM

    Mmm, kosher pastrami...and young pickles. Ahhgllaghhl...

    ReplyDelete
  65. Mooser2:30 PM

    Everybody is always trying to evade the regulations. I once caught my glat kosher relatives eating turkey ham.

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  66. Mooser2:31 PM

    young pickles


    Picked at the peak of preshness!

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  67. Aimai2:32 PM

    I kind of thought this was like the eddie murphy snl skit about how the white world really works. Maybe there is a 1800blakforecast line.

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  68. Mark_Bzzzz2:37 PM

    I lived in NYC in the 80s. The Post was embarrassing trash aimed at people with a third grade education level. Even the comics and sports pages were crappy. Is it any wonder that the front page was garbage?

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  69. Mark_Bzzzz2:40 PM

    It's not about making money for the museum, it's about keeping the poor raffle out. I suspect that the new policy won't bring in that much more money, but it will make it easier for well to do tourists not having to share the galleries with smelly middle class and poor New Yorkers.

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  70. Mark_Bzzzz2:44 PM

    The credibility of the Post rivals that of the Weekly World News. Put them next to each other on the newsstand and it's hard to tell them apart. Always bet on Batboy.

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  71. smut clyde2:47 PM

    My own cynical suspicion was that the PJMedia dude is about announce a fund for the "Save the US from NYC Voters" campaign, and ask the readers to donate heavily so they can turn the polls around with new-media advertising.

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  72. BigHank532:55 PM

    It's a great word, although given the usual semi-scatologic bent to the humor around here I was disappointed to learn it had nothing to do with a prolapse.

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  73. philaedelphialawyer2:56 PM

    For once, I don't even care what they say. I won't even read the excepts here, much less get off the boat! I can't even hear them.....Laalalallaalalalalal!
    We win, they lose. Ha! HA!!! HAAAAA!!!!1!!!!!11 That's all know, all I need to know, and all I want to know!

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  74. BigHank532:58 PM

    That's odd--I'd always assumed that French speakers didn't need any additional instruction in muttering darkly.

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  75. redoubt3:00 PM

    Blackness Forecast
    There's an interesting Facebook page/Twitter feed/app, waiting to be born. . .

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  76. Depends on who, and more importantly, what they're beatin' :)

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  77. whetstone3:33 PM

    It reminds me a bit of Harold Washington in Chicago--his promising tenure was cut short by his death, but what people remember is "Beirut by the Lake," i.e. the shitshow that mayoral-city council relations became. (Ironically, it is—quantifiably—the one time the council wasn't a rubber stamp.) And that shitshow was basically grounded in Washington's race.

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  78. J Neo Marvin3:41 PM

    You'd think the wingnuts would be happy considering the Sandinistas turned out to be virulently anti-choice once they came into power.

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  79. sigyn3:44 PM

    Oh, so the quinquennial family vacation is plenty often enough to splurge on a visit to the MET?


    To augment all that fancy book-larn'in the kids is gettin', no doubt.

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  80. Gromet4:08 PM

    Whoa. I assumed it did. Quick, to a dictionary with me!

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  81. That's our Edroso, summing it up with an elegant turn of phrase. Of course, the mayonnaise thing works both ways:


    [Pushes glasses back up nose in preparation for reminiscence]


    Back in my grad school days upstate, I chanced to mention to my advisor that we were traveling down to the city. My advisor, a NYC native, explained to me how to go into a corner deli** and get an awesome pastrami on rye. "And do not put mayonnaise on it," he instructed sternly. Because, see, I was originally from the Midwest, where everyone puts mayo on everything, and there was that one time he saw me putting "mayonnaise" on a roast beef sandwich. (It was horseradish, but whatever.) I believe that I took it graciously enough, even though I actually had had no intention of pairing pastrami with mayo. I still like Chicago-style pizza, though, so I guess it all balances out.


    **A particular sort of lunch counter, often combined with a convenience store; nowadays occupied by either a Citibank or a Duane Reade.

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  82. smut clyde4:41 PM

    I rate for Analeptic Alzabo.

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  83. j_bird4:41 PM

    I'd like to serve this comment a stack of hot pancakes drenched with maple syrup.

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  84. The wingnuts are just concerned that the electorate is getting a little... dark... and unsophisticated and, y'know... uh, composed of low-income people of color.

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  85. No, see, that's the fun of white conservatives in the Southwest: they're convinced that they invented Mexican food.

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  86. smut clyde4:46 PM

    a shoe-in

    Noted in the Eggcorn Database.

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  87. Duncan5:02 PM

    Don't worry, the quinquennial family vacation will soon be a thing of the past. You losers are supposed to be working, not going to the beach once every five years!

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  88. j_bird5:31 PM

    What are you, the Derbyshire of pickle aficionados?

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  89. TGuerrant6:16 PM

    "we cannot ignore what is happening there"


    Yes, the Heartland must act! Like when having to ensure Hurricane Sandy victims didn't start sucking tax dollars out of Obama's commie Kenyan teats and like having to drop everything to hold Guns Save Lives Day in Sandy Hook on the anniversary of Adam Lanza's leap into the 2nd Amendment Freedoms spotlight.


    Why, they took their eyes off Massachusetts for just an instant and suddenly there was Romneycare. And we know where THAT led - a shockingly slow website and lots of letters from insurance companies. Good God!

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  90. JSC23976:28 PM

    " burning synagogues and persecuting Jews"

    How come, when I checked the Di Blasio website, there WAS no page for "pogroms" or " blood libel" ?? Another "healthcare.gov"- level glitch?

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  91. We are taking the eldest aimailet back to Chicago, the place of her birth, 16 years after the fact. Any recs? We are hoping to see some theater Oobleck,which much to my surprise still seems to be a happening thing, and we have at least one restaurant we have to revisit even though in my experience 16 years is a death spiral in most restaurant lives.

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  92. Oh, well, fine then! I suppose the work around is to have hotels hand out free passes to upper class potential visitors just to give the guards something to do.

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  93. I'll say it works both ways. I'm sure plenty of jews learned about how wrong this was from watching Woody Allen. I know I did.

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  94. Everything that is white is not dairy. You are welcome.

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  95. Do they really think that they can overcome a 40 percent lead by fomenting hysteria among the Chassids?

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  96. JennOfArk6:44 PM

    just cum-wand was enough for me

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  97. TGuerrant6:49 PM

    It was with great pleasure that I found Derbyshire, still posting on Takimagg, is being called a socialist in the comments. Vote that puppy up!

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  98. TGuerrant6:53 PM

    It's alicu Dildo Time at last!!!!

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  99. I'm shocked you didn't make fun of me for the freudian slip "white suburban voters get hysterical about races that don't involve them." I did a double take when I re-read that comment and I wrote it.

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  100. TGuerrant7:03 PM

    Yeah, they're pushing the $70 memberships (or $60 if you live more than 200 miles away). Compared with the American Museum of Natural History's pricing, it's a wee bit of a deal... unless you're from DC and think museum = Smithsonian = free + pandacam.

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  101. Peregrinus7:22 PM

    Cullen's first few lines are worthy of Woody Paige.

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  102. smut clyde7:41 PM

    A mickle of fickle pickles.

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  103. The movement faded, but if the opinion polls are right, New York voters are about to elect the Occupy movement to run America's largest city.


    Occupy had the best post-Sandy disaster relief.

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  104. The Occupy movement that in 2011 pitched street camps in the U.S. from Wall Street to San Francisco posited a tale of two Americas and class resentment unseen for many decades.


    I wonder how many times the author wrote "latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, arugula-eating elitists". The class resentment was on display, it just was aimed at the wrong targets.

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  105. tigrismus8:12 PM

    posited a tale of two Americas and class resentment unseen for many decades


    None so blind, eh?

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  106. redoubt8:40 PM

    I realized just recently that I've lived the majority of my adulthood in the South. My wife hates cold weather, so I am here for the duration.

    That said: May I recommend the Museum of Science and Industry (where I learned of my normally claustrophobic wife's secret love of submarines), the DuSable Museum, and I always have to be dragged away from the Cultural Center.


    As to restaurants I have the same apprehension that a place we liked is no longer likeable. Current residents may have better ideas.

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  107. redoubt8:43 PM

    Oops, open tag (Disqus, elves &c.)

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  108. The Post's sales are completely driven by an extensive sports section and a 25 cent cover price. I cringe every time I see a working class guy on the subway with a Post in his hands.

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  109. It may be kosher, but it's also gauche-er.

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  110. Tehanu10:22 PM

    Well, the deli where my grandma was the cook for 30 years -- and they still use her recipes -- The Bagel, is still open in Skokie at the Orchard mall. Have the kishka and you'll never want anybody else's kishka again!

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  111. AGoodQuestion10:48 PM

    "Never trust a taco that doesn't come from a Bell."

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  112. AGoodQuestion10:51 PM

    Sure he brought a lesbian over to Our Team, but he did it via that thing that rhymes with "schmiscegenation" so they can't give him full credit.

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  113. A very close friend of mine teaches english and composition at one of the City College campuses. He sometimes gives his students newspaper articles to read or write about, and they tell him that they can't read the NY Times. Probably more than half of any of his composition class is immigrants who are working full time; the one time I taught there that was the makeup. The Post, sadly, is the paper they can read. Some of my students were educated--one was a former teacher-- but their English is not strong. There's also a good chance that for many Post readers its the paper that most closely resembles the papers they had back home wherever they came from. Once upon a time American cities had this. Multiplicity of voices in their newspapers. The dying off of all that diversity of voices has been going on since AJ Liebling started chronicling it. And yet I can't help wondering if there wouldn't be room for a progressive version of the Post--the anti-Post if you will. The need for it is real. I fear that the Left is good at talking about poor people but maybe not so good at talking to them. Because whatever else you can say about the Post they know their audience. Do we have anything that compares?

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  114. ChrisV8211:02 PM

    Yeah, color me confused when I read about the Democrat arguing for less government and the Conservatives are railing against THAT. Can we just agree that all politics are a shit show and we fling what we want, when we want, and hope it sticks on the proper wall?

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  115. ChrisV8211:04 PM

    I haven't lived in New York since 1990, and it's not a place I recognize now. I imagine me returning would be like plopping some plucky Italian kid from the 50s and dropping him into Brooklyn today. "Hey, where's the Dodgers?" Man, fuck the Dodgers. Wait, where was I?

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  116. AGoodQuestion11:35 PM

    Yeah, it's possible I was being unfair to the Boston candidates earlier. I kind of like Walsh, and at the very least Connally deserves credit for being willing to run against Menino before he chose not to run again. But it seems to me that the Boston biz establishment really wants, so bad they can taste it, to gut the public schools in order to build up some IPO charters, and to some extent they seem bound to get it.

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  117. sigyn4:38 AM

    You don't know how right you are. I was so thrilled to finally get a job that offered paid vacations. Then I found out how incredibly pissy they get if you actually try to use it.

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  118. I am sure you are right but I thought both Walsh and Connally had pretty much come out against more charters/privatization? I hope we can head it off. If MA can't get its head around public school support then no state can. I realize that its like fracking in children's heads and in parent's pockets--the last great boondoggle, but *&^% I hope we can run the rheeformers out of our state.

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  119. Sorry, that should have been 1-800-bla-k4me.

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  120. redoubt10:01 AM

    To paraphrase Yogi Berra, "If Joseph Pulitzer was alive, he'd be turning over in his grave."

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  121. professor fate11:11 AM

    Late to game here but I would Point out that even if the WSJ isn't giving Giuliani enough credit, Giuliani is perfectly capable of making up any short fall by himself. It was said while he was mayor that he'd take credit for the coming of spring if he could.

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  122. slavdude6:31 PM

    The Chicago Art Institute is always pretty cool.

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