Sunday, August 18, 2013

Fran Lebowitz Nails Bloomberg's "Legacy"

She says we are all paying for Bloomberg's height and how badly he was treated on the playground when he was a kid - the bullied boy grew up to be a bully who makes everyone pay for his past slights and humiliations.

Here are some more of her remarks on Bloomberg:

One of the worst things about Michael Bloomberg being the mayor is that because he was so rich, he didn’t have to appeal to what he kept calling the “special interest groups” — which, you know, I would call the “citizens.”

I don’t think public school teachers are a special interest group; I don’t think cops are a special interest group; I don’t think tenants are a special interest group. Billionaires are a special interest group. So when he says that anyone who is running for mayor is going to have to make concessions to these special interest groups — that is what democracy is. Not issuing bans and demands.

He thinks of himself as the public health mayor. How many hospitals closed under Bloomberg? Hospitals: that’s public health. Smoking, soda, salt? That’s private health. And what could be more minute? I mean, I’ve never heard anyone say, “ ‘Do you like New York?’ ‘Mmm, not really, too salty.’ ”

When he announced this soda thing, someone showed me the size soda that you couldn’t have. I didn’t know those existed. My first apartment was smaller than that. I think maybe in Abu Ghraib they make you drink that soda. It seems like a crazy amount of soda; it doesn’t mean I think it should be against the law.

Also, he’s the “green mayor”? He’s the green mayor who travels by private jet. There is nothing more polluting than jet fuel. One of his little trips on his private jet, to wherever he goes on the weekend — he doesn’t tell us, that’s his private life — that is every cigarette ever smoked in the history of New York City.

I don’t know how many of these bikes there are, but it seems like there are 80 million of them. I do not want to see 80 million ads for Citibank. When they first put them in, Bloomberg said, “Wasn’t that nice of Citibank? They gave us these bicycles.” Really? Let me put it this way: I would rather see Citibank give us back our money, and then I would buy them a bicycle. And also maybe a skateboard, if they’re really good.

The overturning of the term limits — when this happens in another country, we call this a coup. We, the citizens, voted — twice! — to have term limits, and then he overturned them. I saw him give some press conference about guns. He said something like, “I believe in democracy,” and I thought, No, you don’t. No, you certainly do not. Vladimir Putin has the same belief in democracy you do.

I really felt that during the election of the pope, Bloomberg was in a state of contained hysteria, trying to figure out, “How can I get this gig?” If I was in charge of electing the pope, I would elect him, because anything that would get him out of New York would be fine with me.

 Lebowitz got it all - the hypocrisy of the environmentalism (how about the two SUV's he's always got idling by the sidewalk ready to take him wherever he goes), the stupidity over the soda ban as a public health crisis when closing all the freaking hospitals below 34th street is the REAL public health crisis, this jive about teachers and city workers being "special interests" but somehow Wall Street CEO's and Goldman Sachs are not, and finally how Bloomberg views democracy the way Putin views it, as something to be subverted, manipulated, used when needed, discarded otherwise.

Yeah, she really nailed Bloomberg's "legacy."

12 comments:

  1. Yeah, and he believes in the legal system, as in the courts, except when he loses in them. Then he berates the judge, and her decisions, as in stop and frisk. Anotherwords, how DARE she rule against ME! When the UFT sues in defense of keeping school libraries open, (how dare they), he immediately runs to Albany to get a waiver of this law, so the courts can't rule. By the way, this Ed. Law is already on the books, and the union is merely asking that it be enforced. The man is a king in his private life, and insists on making this country into his private kingdom, where and how he sees fit. He's so steamed about the stop and frisk ruling, that he turns around and states that all project people should be immediately finger printed , since they commit 20% of the crime !
    But then again, underneath the stench that is Bloomberg, this IS the nature of the new ruling class in this country-1% dictators.

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    1. His statements about fingerprinting all NYCHA residents were so offensive. I don;t understand why there wasn't a bigger protest over these comments. I find Bloomberg to be as racist as Giuliani ever was, yet somehow he skirts this part of his "legacy" with many whites. Stip and frisk, education policy, wanting to fingerprint all food stamp recipients, wanting to fingerprint all NYCHA residents - welcome to Soweto on the Hudson.

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  2. We are in a totalitarian dictatorship....oh, and get ready for Hillary 2016. Lets continue with the same 'ol tired royal family.

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  3. Jeb Bush for sure, though his mother, bless her soul, told him to take a seat. She has some class left, apparently...

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    1. Nahh, she just wants to see her grandson, George P., run in the future and erase the profane meaning associated with the name "Bush."

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  4. Don't forget Chelsea...she'll be a state senator before long...

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  5. Thing about Fran's comments above, though hitting a homerun-where was all of the criticism, both in the press and the media against Bloomberg the last 12 years...?

    They were quiet like mice...

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    1. True for many critics, but Fran Lebowitz is on record bashing Bloomberg before - and quite skillfully:

      http://dangerousminds.net/comments/a_tale_of_two_cities_fran_lebowitz_rips_mayor_bloomberg_a_new_one

      http://www.blackbookmag.com/nightlife/fran-lebowitz-on-page-six-mayor-bloomberg-and-kim-kardashian-1.35806

      http://www.ny1.com/content/politics/road_to_city_hall/169627/ny1-online--fran-lebowitz-takes-bloomberg-to-task

      http://no-third-term.blogspot.com/2012/08/fran-lebowitz-ows-mike-bloomberg.html

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  6. Thank you for that...didn't have time before to ask on Fran's record...good to hear...!

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