Bruno at his Albany press conference yesterday, displaying his Glen Falls–trained fistPhoto: AP
You’re always hearing about how Albany is broken and dysfunctional and doesn’t work like any other legislative seat. And people are always saying that like it’s a bad thing. It occurs to us this morning, however, that maybe it’s not. Maybe Albany’s dysfunction is refreshing: As Eliot Spitzer is siccing both the state attorney general and Albany County’s D.A. on Joe Bruno for what the steamroller is alleging is Hevesian misuse of state aircraft and state troopers, Bruno isn’t firing back with any of that “my distinguished opponent” crap. Here’s the Senate leader yesterday, as quoted in the Times:
[Spitzer is] an overgrown rich spoiled brat who has tantrums all over the place [and is] too temperamental to be the chief executive of 19 million people. [He] does not understand that he is not a dictator, he is not a tyrant, he is not a king. … I grew up in the toughest part of Glens Falls, next to the boxcars, where kids would come up to you when you weighed 90 pounds and they weighed 120 and just punch you right in the mouth just because you were Italian, O.K., or just because you lived next to the boxcars, or just because they felt like it. That’s how I grew up, O.K.? So swing away.
Is it wrong that we’re now hoping this turns into a fistfight? (Actually, yes, it probably is: We imagine Bruno would win. He comes from the tough part of Glens Falls, after all.)
