How much does the New York Times love, and defend, Mayor bill de blasio?
Here, from Michael M. Grynbaum and Nikita Stewart\’s article in yesterday\’s edition, is its latest Hallmark Card-quality paean to his glory:
Mayor Bill de Blasio, confronting the gravest crisis of his young administration, has been by turns composed and defiant, empathetic and indignant, urging calm in one moment and lashing out in frustration the next.
In other words, he has acted like himself: a confident but mercurial leader whose singular political style has not wavered, even in the face of a potentially career-defining flash point over the police and race.
In a sharp turn from his predecessors – the pugnacious, prosecutorial Rudolph W. Giuliani and the business-minded Michael R. Bloomberg – Mr. de Blasio, a political professional who promised a warmer, friendlier City Hall, is approaching the fallout from the shooting deaths of two police officers with an operative’s touch, and a healthy dose of the personal.
Aidesto the mayor say that they are intent on de-escalating the conflict,and that they have been effective at it. Rather than dispatchingsurrogates to the airwaves with an explicit set of talking points,they say they have privately encouraged community leaders, laborallies and elected officials to echo Mr. de Blasio\’s message ofcalm and unity.
Themayor on Monday urgeda moratorium on street demonstrations that he previously hadcondoned, angering some of his allies on the left.
Is that how you see de blasio\’s handling of this situation?
Do you (and, for that matter, do Grynbaum and Stewart) happen to remember the four months after Michael Brown\’s death, during which de blasio made it clear to just about everyone (except maybe the folks at the Times) that his sympathies were with protesters, not police? Do you recall that he had no problem with them blocking intersections? Closing bridges and tunnels? Did you hear any words of condemnation from him as they marched and changed “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want them? Now”?
Do you believe that de blasio has “been effective” at “de-escalating the conflict”? In what way?
Have the protesters taken de blasio\’s too little-too late urging of no street demonstrations until after the funerals of Officers Liu and Ramos to heart? Have they stopped their disruption of New York City for even one second? They don\’t believe he means it and wouldn\’t care if they did, because they know he won\’t lift a finger to force them to protest within the law.
bill de blasio is a disgrace. He is a career politician in no small part because of a commercial featuring his interracial, Black-looking son with a big afro, that warmed the hearts of liberals all over the city. It moved him from the bottom of the primary field to the top, and coasted him to victory over an unknown, undynamic Republican opponent.
de blasio is a lesson in why people should vote for qualifications rather than symbolism – a lesson that all too many people will not learn; not now, not ever.
His “handling” (if you can even call it that) of the protesters does not even rise to the level of shameful. He has irretrievably lost the confidence – what little they had in the first place – of the NYPD. He has made it crystal clear that law abiding, decent people who simply want to go about their lives peacefully in New York are in the back of his bus.
But to the New York Times? He is a God.
