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Mayor Bloomberg To Us, "Papa Smurf" To Others
By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 17, 2009
Modified Aug 17, 2009
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By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 17, 2009
Modified Aug 17, 2009
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In this week's issue of the New Yorker, reporter Ben McGrath looks at Mayor Bloomberg—headline, "THE UNTOUCHABLE," subhead, "Can a good mayor amass too much power?" While the article offers an image of Bloomberg with a crown hovering over his head, the caption says this, "Ambitious younger mayors around the country call him Papa Smurf." Indeed, further into the piece, McGrath writes, "[Newark mayor Cory] Booker and other ambitious younger mayors around the country, like Adrian Fenty, in Washington, D.C., call him Papa Smurf."
The article goes into his rise to wealth, mayoral record and initiatives, re-election campaign positioning, overturning term limits, calling reporter Azi Paybarah a "disgrace," and more. The Post points out how Bloomberg compares himself to Robert Moses, the powerful city parks commissioner, "I think if you look we've done more in the last seven years than -- I don't know if it's fair to say more than Moses did -- but I hope history will show the things we did made a lot more sense... You know, Moses did some things that turned out not to be great: cutting us off from the waterfront, putting roads all along the water, as well as one Democratic consultant's thought, "He's probably been a fine mayor, but he seems a lot better because all the usual agitators -- groups that exist to drive a mayor crazy -- have in one way or another been bought off... It's amazing the climate you can have when nobody is criticizing you."
Which brings us back to the Papa Smurf analogy: According to Wikipedia, "Papa Smurf...serves as the Smurfs' leader and as a paternal figure of which the Smurfs usually go to when they require counsel and he is always concerned about the Smurf's wellbeing and harmony... n the original comic books by Peyo, Papa Smurf had a much more forceful personality, and had a short-temper (often seen getting angry with his smurfs when they did something wrong or were not obeying his orders)." Also: "When real chaos rises among them, Papa Smurf takes very drastic measures, often using magic"!!
Tagged
election 2009
mayor bloomberg
mayoral campaign
michael bloomberg
papa smurf
re-election
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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