It took a Freedom of Information Act request to get City Hall to turn over its complete list of interns to the New York Times, but after finally getting hold of the list, the paper reveals that the time-honored tradition of hiring your friends’ kids as unpaid summer workers has been alive and well for the 60-odd years Michael Bloomberg has been in office. You might recognize the last names of some of them: Alexander Blankfein, for example, who interned there while he was still in high school. Or Luke Russert, who spent a summer juggling an internship there with one at NBC (natch) working for Conan O’Brien. There’s a Tisch on that list somewhere, too, and a Peterson (as in, one of Pete’s — but probably not PC). There’s Neil Simon’s stepson, and Robert Caro’s grandson, and conductor Erich Leinsdorf’s granddaughter.
All the big-name kids seem to be connected to Bloomberg or close associates like deputy mayor Patricia Harris. And some were quite young! For example, Jacob Doctoroff (son of former Deputy Mayor Dan) interned when he was in eighth grade. “It was either that or going to summer camp,” Jacob told the Times, making it seem like playing all summer at camp was the way lamer, less-fun alternative to an office job for a 14-year-old boy. And thus, all of a sudden, being the child of a friend of Mayor Bloomberg’s no longer seems so awesome.
