What the hell happened? We headed into the new week secure in our conviction that New York is the nexus of the universe, and the rest of the world is finally coming to terms with it: Witness the election season dominated by an avowed Yankee fan … and Rudy Giuliani. Then came the latest poll numbers. According to USA Today-Gallup figures, Hillary has slipped by eleven points in the last month, and Rudy by nine. (Hey! Nine-eleven! Spooky!) Obama is actually leading Clinton in Iowa, and a man named Huckabee is closing the gap with Rudy. Dems hoping to ride the Clinton coattails are increasingly nervous, and Hillary herself is beginning to fidget: She’s intensified her anti-Obama rhetoric, calling him an unqualified “talker” (in what the Times terms a “mellifluous voice”).

Yesterday came the final confirmation that America has turned on us: Diane Sawyer called Mayor Bloomberg a “munchkin” on live TV. Granted, she did it in the middle of an idiotic question about his childhood: “As a little munchkin, did you come into New York ever with your family?” [Ed. note: All the way from Boston?] Still, the five-foot-seven mayor seemed to have taken slight offense, joking later in the day about not being able to reach a sign in Times Square. It seems as if they — “they” being the part of America handily embodied by Diane Sawyer — are attacking our very stature! Fine: Once our brief run as the popular kid is over, New York will only be relieved to return to its normal goth-kid activities: sulking, wearing black, and dreaming of secession. —Michael Idov

Hill, Rudy Poll Fault [NYP]
Diane Sawyer Be-littles Mayor Bloomberg as 'Munchkin' [NYDN]