On Wednesday, the Morning Joe panel turned its attention to writer Gabe Sherman‘s new New York Magazine article looking at New York mayor Mike Bloomberg‘s goal of ultimately becoming “mayor of the world,” overseeing and deciding issues such as, as Sherman listed, where people can smoke, what they should eat and drink, how much companies can pollute, and how schools educate their children.
“How badly does he want to be president of the United States?” asked host Joe Scarborough.
“I mean you see it,” said Sherman. “There is no love loss between the Mayor and the White House and, you know, they try to set up meetings. The golf game, you know, meetings back channel. Bill Daley reached out to the Mayor to see if he wanted to be president of the World Bank. I mean, there have been efforts to kind of bridge these camps. Mike Bloomberg has the ambition and believes he has the skill to be president of the United States. ”
“And the other side of that is, he just doesn’t think Barack Obama has the skill to be president of the United States,” Scarborough added.
“It’s the experience question,” said Sherman. “This goes back to people who look at the President, people in Mike Bloomberg’s circle who say Mike Bloomberg has much more business experience, he has more political experience than this President.”
“He has an infrastructure in place as well,” added host Mika Brzezinski. “And, I mean, a staff and political experts.”
Sherman also made note that “the big unanswered question” is that of whether Bloomberg will purchase the New York Times, referring to it as “a trophy that Mike Bloomberg wants that would give him instant credibility and cache on the global stage.”
You can see more analysis of the potential Bloomberg buy of the Times here.
If Bloomberg gets to buy the Times, you have three union-busting oligarchs owning pretty much all of the print media in town.
Murdoch owns the Post and the WSJ, as well as FOX 5, FOX News, FOX Business, and whatever the hell they're calling Channel 9 these days.
Zuckerman owns the News (which is fast becoming an even bigger embarrassment than it already was as new editor/hacking criminal Colin Myler turns it into a British tabloid like the Daily Mirror) and US News.
Bloomberg owns Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Views, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Add the Times to that stable and that leaves NY1, the NBC, CBS, ABC affiliates, and Channel 11 as the only major print/TV media outlets not owned by Murdoch, Zuckerman or Bloomberg.
Welcome to the Neo-Feudal 21st Century.
All the news the oligarchs want you to read and see.
Wow, imagine the little shit as President. After telling us where we can smoke ,drink, and what we should eat, he may even tell us how we should dress.
ReplyDeleteI really don't think he will play well outside of New York.....a nasal-voiced short Jewish guy may not be very well received in, say, Ohio the way he's received here in New York. His megalomaniac approach may also not be palatable to those where being so dictatorial is just not the new normal. If he does buy the New York Times, I will most likely cancel my subscription, which I've had for about 20 years now. I hope others do the same and it fails as a paper, It already shows its elitist and ed-deformy side intolerably often.
ReplyDeleteIf you recall, Bloomberg Views was started as a way to buy off reporters to write stories no matter how slanted or untrue as along as they voiced his own personal views.
ReplyDeleteBut I do wonder how much influence he has over the NYTimes who just lost one good education reporter and one great education reporter.