The NY Post's Relentless Campaign To Take Out De Blasio

The criminals/hackers who work at the NY Post scour the city daily for "quality of life" stories that can be used to politically drub Bill de Blasio as a weak, liberal mayor who has brought back the "Bad Old Days."

There are real stories that should be covered, of course, and are concerning - like the one about the 13 people shot at the house party last night.

But then there are the stories that they highlight because de Blasio is mayor and they want to make him look bad in order to weaken him and make it more likely he is seriously challenged for re-election.

Take this one about a mugging in Central Park:

A violent beggar choked a West Side man into unconsciousness in Central Park’s Ramble in a hellish mugging that underscores the famed park’s skyrocketing robbery stats.

“If you scream I’ll kill you,” were the last words the 53-year-old victim heard Thursday night as the fiend’s arm tightened around his throat and he collapsed to the ground, cops said.

Upon regaining consciousness about half an hour later, the victim, of West 57th Street, found that his wallet was gone.

His backpack, which held glasses, keys, gift cards, jewelry and cash, was also gone, cops said.

News of the brutal mugging had park-goers on edge Saturday.

“He could have died — that’s awful,” said Martin Ovalle, 38, who runs in the park at night and takes his wife and two young daughters to the Ramble on weekends.

“We are seeing a lot more now than in the past,” Ovalle agreed.

Indeed we are!

The "crime wave" in Central Park has seen crime increase from 10 incidents last year through July to 20 this year - a 50% increase!

From 10 to 20.

Notice too the hyperbole in the writing, "a violent beggar" - a "fiend" - "choked a man into unconsciousness" in a "hellish mugging" that underscores the park's "skyrocketing robbery stats."

From 10 to 20.

How many millions of people visited the park in the first seven months of the year?

There were 20 incidents, a uptick from last year's 10.

AM NY reports the following about a quality of life story in de Blasio's New York that appears to be politically motivated:

"Bathtub of a Bum"

That's how CBS2 political reporter Marcia Kramer described Columbus Circle yesterday, after publishing exclusive pictures of a shirtless and possibly homeless man lathering up in the fountain. She also published video of the same man lounging at the entrance to Central Park, bare-chested, scratching his head and perhaps wondering how the squeegee business would be in the neighborhood.

"At least he's bathing," said one Twitter user, but the quality-of-life offense was no laughing matter to Kramer, who brought the issue to Mayor de Blasio's attention at a press conference.

De Blasio tersely said that the city was paying attention to quality-of-life offenses, and NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton noted the expansion of a pilot program training up to 10,000 officers to deal with the homeless and the emotionally disturbed. The Mayor's wife, Chirlane McCray, is also heading up a mental health initiative with an emphasis on the city's most needy citizens-roadmap to come during the fall (originally, it was planned to be unveiled this summer).

De Blasio's blues.

The rub-a-dub-dub scandal is no laughing matter for de Blasio.

A small uptick in violent crime in the recent months and a campaign by one of the city's newspapers to chronicle some incidents of . . . shall we say public exposure, paired with a City Council plan to rethink the enforcement of some quality-of life offenses has created the impression of a city backsliding through liberal boneheadedness into the tough-city days gone by.

De Blasio knows that botched snowstorms and lack of public safety are a good way to become a one-term mayor.

The back story (there always is one in Gotham)

The pictures of the still unidentified man cleaning himself under Columbus' watchful gaze, it's important to note, were not taken by some random concerned citizen, but a media relations professional named Ken Frydman, who served as Rudy Giuliani's spokesman and director of media relations during Giuliani's first successful campaign for mayor.

Frydman is recycling some arguments from his old boss's heyday about a dangerous city where squeegee men run wild.

Perhaps the bather, if he really is homeless, can use help or shelter.  A concerned citizen can always call 311 to get help for a homeless person. The man probably doesn't mean to be the symbol of a pandemic.

Also, it's feels like a gazillion degrees out. Maybe he just needed to cool down.

Yeah, the video made it's way to Kramer from Giuliani's PR guy, then Kramer dutifully ran with it so that it becomes the emblem of the "NYC Unraveling" narrative.

Don't kid yourself, there's a concerted effort going on to undermine de Blasio and bring back the narrative of the "Bad Old Days," as if these kinds of incidents didn't happen under Bloomberg.

Hell, anybody remember that Sunday morning a few years ago when a motorcycle gang (including an undercover cop) terrorized a couple on the West Side Highway?

Let me refresh your memories:




The full video taken by one of the motorcycle thugs is here, but it's been disabled for embedding.

Let us imagine this incident happened during de Blasio's term - how would the Post cover it?

As another "De Blasio Returns Us To Bad Old Days" story - a gang of 50+ motorcycle thugs takes over the West Side Highway, surrounds a man and his family in a threatening way, then chases him for a couple of miles before pulling him out of his SUV and savagely beating him on the street in front of his wife and child.

The family called for help "four times" to 911 but no police arrived to help - although one undercover cop with the motorcycle gang did take part in the beat down.

How awful!

Except this story happened during Bloomberg's term as mayor, so the criminals and hacks at the Post never connected it to a larger narrative of the "City Unraveling!" that they connect every crime and quality of life story to now.

Is the increase in shootings in the city a cause for concern?

Sure and de Blasio had better be concerned and dealing with the issue or he's going to be a one term mayor.

But other crime stats remain down, despite the Post's best efforts to turn the city back into the Dinkins Years when a couple of thousand people were murdered.

And it's not like high profile crime didn't occur during Bloomberg's term - the incidents just didn't get connected to a larger narrative meant to destroy him politically as they do now under de Blasio.

As for the quality of life issues like people defecating on the street, the truth is, the city was gross during the Bloomberg Years and it remains so now during the de Blasio Years.

Or did I miss something and you could eat off the pedestrian plazas Mayor Mike stuck everywhere in Manhattan?