It’s a question that human physiologists have pondered for centuries, all the way back to the days of Leonardo: How does a liberal Democrat outflank The New York Times editorial page? What act of extreme flexibility must it take? Even contortionists shudder at the thought.
But not the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio.
The Times published an editorial Friday lauding de Blasio’s message of urgency and unity he delivered at his inauguration this week. “It was an encouraging moment,” the editorial reads, “as the mayor vowed to make New York a better, fairer place for everyone.” Not all of the speakers with whom de Blasio shared podium time, however, were as harmonious as he was, coming off as “both graceless and smug,” the Times writes.
Worst among them, but hardly alone, was the new public advocate, Letitia James, who used her moment for her own head-on attack: on the 12 years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In doing so, she made a prop of a 12-year-old girl named Dasani, who had to hold the Bible and Ms. James’s hand as Ms. James called for a government “that cares more about a child going hungry than a new stadium or a new tax credit for a luxury development.”
Dasani was profiled in a recent series of articles in The Times illustrating how bad things get for homeless families in the shelter system. Ms. James turned her into Exhibit A of an Inauguration Day prosecution: the People v. Mayor Bloomberg. So did the pastor whose invocation likened New York to a “plantation,” and Harry Belafonte, who strangely laid the problem of America’s crowded prisons at the feet of the former mayor, an utterly bogus claim, while saying Mr. Bloomberg shared responsibility for the nation’s “deeply Dickensian justice system.”
Granted, this is the newspaper praising a leftist and defending another left-leaning politician from, in Belafonte’s case, a Castro sympathizer. It’s like policing one side of the neighborhood street. Regardless, the editorial board’s words against the speakers are forceful — and as Mediaite points out, de Blasio’s are not.
“I am very comfortable with everyone’s remarks yesterday and I think the ceremony represented the positive aspiration of New Yorkers for a more just city,” de Blasio said at a Thursday press conference. “… I think everyone who spoke at the inauguration spoke from the heart, talked about their own understanding of our city and what we need to do to move our city forward. I’m very comfortable with all that was done.”
It was reported that de Blasio was pressed further on the speeches, and he simply pivoted to his “respect” for the speakers’ “right to say that which they feel is appropriate.”
So at that point, hasn’t the Times undercut its own argument that de Blasio adopted a theme of “unity” for the day?
