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Bloomberg Thinks Obama Needs Business Advisers
By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 2, 2010
Modified Dec 2, 2010
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 2, 2010
Modified Dec 2, 2010
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GQ Magazine has a surprisingly intimate interview with Mayor Bloomberg in their latest December issue, which celebrates their Men of the Year, including actor Jeff Bridges, Stephen Colbert and rapper Drake. While Bloomberg denies (yet again) that he's considering running for President, he does engage in a little Presidential criticism: "The president, I think, needs some better advisers. He campaigns "I'm gonna do A," and then he doesn't do it. Now he's pissed off the supporters and the opponents," he said of President Obama. And today, Bloomberg had a suggestion of who those new better advisers could be: Business people.
Asked about the interview today, Bloomberg told reporters, "One of the things that I've urged the president to do is to get some business people in his close tight circle. One of the president's jobs is to promote American business around the world, sell our products around the world, get people from around the world to come and invest here." Specifically in the GQ interview, he criticized the President for his wavering stance on the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, which Bloomberg defended over the summer: "...you know, if you're going to stand up for the mosque Friday night, you don't walk away from it Saturday morning."
Bloomberg saves most of his bile though for those damned parasitic reporters and bloggers: "I am a believer that the public is a lot smarter than the press—that they don't read the press, listen to the press, remember what the press wrote. If you go out in the street and say, "Who is Monica Lewinsky or Gary Condit?" a lot of people wouldn't know."
The Mayor also discusses former Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who once said "There's no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage," and who Bloomberg considers a sort of role model. He also gives an elegant summation of what he believes makes this city different from other international metropolises:
But New York is different, because we live as a mixture and they live as a mosaic.
In London, there is an Arab quarter, if you will, an Irish quarter, a Roma quarter, whatever. In New York, in one block you have signs in Arabic and in Korean and in Spanish and English. New Yorkers, I don't know that they like each other or socialize together, but they go down the same steps to the subway, they hail a cab at the same corner, they buy their coffee at the same Starbucks, their newspaper at the same kiosk—and so people who look different, act different, sound different, smell different, dress different, whatever, they are not threatening, because you are next to them all the time. That gets people to work together in a way here that's not true elsewhere.
Tagged
gq
ground zero mosque
interview
mayor bloomberg
president obama
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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