New York notes: Performativity

"Mr. Mayor, you may now kiss the candidate." Photo by Chang W. Lee, New York Times.

Woke up this morning to the alarming sound of Mayor Bill De Blasio endorsing the unspeakable immigrant-hating Kathy Hochul in New York's lieutenant governor primary over her rival candidate Tim Wu, who unlike Hochul is known to believe many of the same things as the mayor:

on Wednesday she received her biggest and most unlikely endorsement yet: from Mayor Bill de Blasio, the liberal leader of New York City, who pronounced her “a true progressive.”

“I’m proud to support Kathy,” Mr. de Blasio said, as Ms. Hochul stood by his side.

I was really taken aback for a moment, and then I realized, "Oh! He's only lying," and went back to sleep, completely reassured.

Chris Cross

Why are these men laughing? Via Capital New York.

New Jersey governor Christopher Christie, although his job as chairman of the Republican Governors Association tasks him above all things with working for GOP victories in this year's 36 gubernatorial races, is strangely reluctant to offer any support to the Republican candidate across the Hudson in New York, somebody called Rob Astorino (which would be the Italian for "little goshawk" and not, as I hoped, "little star"—twinkle, twinkle!), against the Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo.

That may be, according to a brilliant analytic piece by Andrea Bernstein of WNYC radio New York. because Christie and Cuomo are practically the same person:

Civil Liberties Watch

Woke up this morning hearing a debate from that silly NPR series on the resolution that

INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO UNLIMITED SPENDING ON THEIR OWN POLITICAL SPEECH

which I thought should be pretty interesting as not a boring old Republican vs. Democrat issue but one in which progressives are aligned on both sides, the ACLU itself notoriously having come down on the side of Citizens United. Sadly, it was not; the most interesting thing was former ACLU head Nadine Strossen arguing, for the proposition, that there are cases when it is legitimate to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater—like when there is actually a fire.

No! No! No! That is the worst time to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. If you become aware that a crowded theater is on fire, you should quietly let the management know so that everybody can be safely evacuated. Yelling "Fire!" is the way to start a panic and jam the exits and you will all die.

The worst was that my candidate for New York governor, Zephyr Teachout, arguing against the proposition, didn't call her on it. Come on, Zephyr, you can do better than that.

Lois Lane setting a terrible example.

Cross-posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog.

Lectiones

Photo by Mike Groll/AP.

Merry Andrew

Today's story in the Times about Andrew Cuomo's Moreland Commission, which he set up a year ago to investigate corruption in the New York State government and then shut down last March with the unconvincing explanation that it wasn't needed because the legislature had promised to pass a bunch of reform bills (two days later they failed to pass the main items) is pretty shocking, even if you've had a bad feeling about Cuomo for quite a while (one of my first posts, in December 2011, expressed some distress).