Chris Smith: A Bloomberg Oligarchy?Our columnist wonders at the forces that made Bloomberg feel that skirting the rules for a third term was necessary: namely, his cadre of mogul friends.
ByChris Smith
in other news
Ed Koch Is Still AliveThe former mayor is the new poster child for Life Alert. And he didn’t even fall without being able to get up!
Is an Ed Koch Sex Scandal Next?Eliot Spitzer slept with hookers. Jim and Dina McGreevey had threesomes with their driver. Governor David Paterson’s list of conquests is starting to look like it could be longer than Wilt Chamberlain’s. And then there’s Ed Koch.
early and often
Rudy at His Rudest
Before he became the mayor of America, Rudy Giuliani was the dark, petty, vindictive, small-minded, and possibly racist mayor of New York, GQ reminds us in their February issue’s “Oral History of Giuliani’s Temper,” in which mostly the usual suspects (Ed Koch, Al Sharpton, Jerry Hauer) share stories of tangling with Rudy at his well, rudest. “He has this streak, Rudy, where he looks for unnecessary confrontations,” retired NYPD chief Louis Anemone says. “Is he overcompensating? I sure as hell don’t know. But I worked with men, I worked with real men, and they didn’t have to do that.” Ouch. With Giuliani melting in the polls lately, the takedown doesn’t seem as urgent as it must have however many months ago they conceived of it, and there’s not a lot of new stuff, but it is a nice little walk down memory lane. All of the great incidents are here: Amadou Diallo, Giuliani’s role in the 1992 police riots, the scandal with the Brooklyn Museum, Abner Louima. Basically, it’s like a big, juicy gossip sesh, made all the more fun for the fact that Giuliani is probably pretty steamed up about it, since, as lawyer Marcia Paul puts it, “one wonders more than anything else whether the man has a sense of humor.”
in other news
Giuliani Gains Access to City’s Most ‘Exclusive’ Club!The Harmonie Club: Founded in 1852 by Jews after Christian clubs would not let them join, it’s lately been hitting headlines because of its own exclusivity. MTA chief Dale Hemmerdinger was pressured by black and Latino politicians to quit the club (he was a former president) before taking on his post this month. The membership of Bernard Spitzer, father of Eliot, has been much discussed of late, as has Barack Obama’s decision to cancel a fund-raiser there earlier this year. Mayor Bloomberg himself canceled his membership before taking office, citing their lack of diversity as his main complaint. So it’s perhaps an off choice of location for Rudy Giuliani’s Republican Jewish fund-raiser today, as the Daily News’s Daily Politics blog reports. The campaign was hush-hush about it, so maybe they were hoping no one would notice. It might also be the case that he agrees with Ed Koch and thinks the club has every right to exclude non-Jews. Or maybe he just doesn’t care what New Yorkers think of him anymore, unless they’re giving him money. Our secret theory is that he was confused and thought the Harmonie Club was only keeping out straight people. Just because of, you know, the name.
Giuliani at the Harmonie? [NYDN]
