What's the Plan, Bill de Blasio?
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We have no idea whether Mayor de Blasio really believes he can be president. But whether he does or doesn’t, you have to wonder why he would willingly subject himself to the worst kind of hometown ridicule yet again.
The mayor braved blizzards and half-filled rooms in Iowa last week, eager to issue coy answers about his presidential aspirations that few cared to ask. The papers back home –
all
of them – treat these excursions as target practice.
The News
quoted former Public Advocate candidate Ron Kim as calling de Blasio
“delusional”
and the
Post
chortled over “meager” crowds and Iowans
confused
by the presence of this tall politician from that eastern city.
Jeffery C. Mays in The Times was kinder, (though noting the “sparse” crowds that greeted him), but editorial writer Mara Gay was
merciless
. “One former de Blasio staffer sent me a text with a string of four emojis meant to evoke the experience of laughing so hard that you cry,” she reported.
“It was hard not to be at least a little hurt as he got ready to take his progressive agenda on the road,” she added. “Had homelessness proven too much of a headache? Did the constant nagging over heating outages in city housing drive him away?”
A man with the political skill to win the mayoralty twice was experiencing a week filled with rejections of his politics and his policies. His signature “Renewal Schools” program died a sad but inevitable death after losing $773 million in a mangled attempt to improve the city’s worst-performing schools.
His wife Chirlane McCray’s “Thrive” mental health program
got kicked around by the City Council
and the media, both of which
questioned expenditures of $850 million on a program whose results the administration can not begin to quantify.
And there was this scary fact: murders in New York City are increasing,
rising to 48 from 31
compared with the same period last year. No matter what has happened during the mayor’s tenure, even with the homeless problem and the failing subways, crime had always been down.
Finally, but not inconsequentially, de Blasio gave up on his dream of a Millionaire’s Tax to help fund subway repairs, bowing at last to Andrew Cuomo’s congestion-pricing vision. In a week filled with failures, this was one that his city could be grateful for.
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Michael Cohen Won't Give Buzzfeed a Break
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So was Buzzfeed right or not?
The morning after Michael Cohen’s riveting congressional testimony, the media seemed curiously split over whether he had confirmed or debunked the site’s famed
bombshell January scoop
that Donald Trump had “directed” him to lie to Congress about a potential Moscow Trump Tower deal. Robert Mueller’s office, if you recall, issued a strong denial, and an impeachment boomlet that the story had triggered vaporized in a matter of moments.
Cohen told Congress Wednesday that Trump hadn't
directed
him to lie. Rather, he said, Trump hinted that that’s what he wanted, in a weird no-means-yes code the two men shared.
The Twittersphere was
all over the map
. But
Buzzfeed claimed victory
, noting that Trump had directed Cohen “in his own way.” Buzzfeed spokesman
Matt Mittenthal said Cohen’s testimony “reaffirms what he claimed in private to investigators, as we reported last month: President Trump directed him to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow....”
We’re big fans of Ben Smith’s (and Matt Mittenthal’s), but the interpretive games were a bit much. As Margaret Sullivan pointed out in the
Washington Post
, Buzzfeed’s original story stated their reporting represented “the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.”
Cohen said Wednesday that Trump’s guidance was
implicit
. “Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress,” Cohen said. “That's not how he operates.”
In the end, Trump may well have been nudging his ex-pal to take one for the team and lie to Congress. But the difference between hinting and saying could make the difference between convicting and acquitting.
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An Extraordinary Debut for Jumaane Williams
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We've seen our share of election night speeches in our time, and are fairly certain that no candidate prior to Tuesday night had ever uttered the words "I’ve been in therapy for the past three years” in his acceptance speech.
But so began
a surprisingly emotional coda
to the race for Public Advocate. The winner, Jumaane Williams, set aside the usual victory party platitudes to show vulnerability at a moment when most winners pump their fists.
“The best time came for me when I realized there was a space in the world for me, and I could make incredible change for me,” he continued.
He then let the tears flow – without any shame, supporters patting his back -- as he addressed an unnamed boy crying himself to sleep at night, missing his dad, only to learn that he, Jumaane Williams, was now next-in-line to the mayoralty in the biggest city in the nation.
It was an extraordinary public debut for a figure many if not most New Yorkers had never heard of. But now they know that Jumaane Williams is their new Public Advocate, and that he isn’t afraid to show them who he is.
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Counting Down the Hours at The News
It sounds like
a great job
for someone who loves news, loves New York City, and has the metabolism to match.
“Oversee and guide content for nydailynews.com and other digital platforms that engages audiences and supports the newsroom’s mission,” begins an ad that pops up on indeed.com, the job-hunt search engine.
“Find and assign stories for journalists, and help journalists develop, report, analyze and create original news and feature stories in text and other forms, including, when appropriate, video, audio, podcasts, Facebook Live events, simple graphics, etc.”
Wow. Also, candidates “will have considerable editing, writing and reporting skills, and a deep understanding of journalism practices and standards.”
In a world in which we seem to read about nothing but layoffs in journalism, this could be just the right fit for many reporters and editors who’ve recently lost their gigs.
But then comes the rub: it’s not a salaried job. It's hourly work. So the newspaper that called itself “New York’s Picture Newspaper” but laid off all its photographers is paying its digital assignment editor by the hour - without, we assume, health benefits, vacation time, overtime or any of the other niceties that traditionally accompany full-time employment.
It makes you wonder how many hours the Daily News has left.
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Here and There
Jonah Goldberg
leaves
National Review
… He’ll join
Steve Hayes,
formerly of the shuttered
Weekly Standard
, to start a new conservative but Trump-skeptical media company…
Susan Watts
, formerly a shooter at
The Daily News
, which has no more shooters, becomes director of visual content for the Office of City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer…
A
dam Nossiter
becomes Paris bureau chief of
The New York Times
…
Nori Onishi
moves from South Africa to become a Paris correspondent…
Alice DuBois
, of
BuzzFeed,
joins Stephen Colbert's Scripto…
Greg Lavine
joins Mercury as a senior vice president…
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“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm about to get on a plane and fly back to a wonderful place called Washington, D.C." –
President Trump, after the collapse of talks with Kim Jong-un.
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Have a career announcement for Here and There? A Quotable quote?
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Kirtzman Strategies is a strategic communications and public affairs firm that works with public officials, nonprofits, companies, tech startups and education organizations.
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