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Bronx "Cheers" Glenn Bleck for Dissing Co-Op City
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 27, 2011
Modified Jan 27, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 27, 2011
Modified Jan 27, 2011
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On his TV show Tuesday night, national debate-poisoner Glenn Beck dumped on the largest cooperative housing development in the world, Co-op City in the Bronx. Describing the historic co-op as a symbol of socialism's drab uniformity, the beloved boob opined, "Once you say there's a place where everyone's life is interchangeable, everyone then has exactly the same stuff, which sounds like these beautiful complexes. Do you want to live there? This is Co-op City. Oh man! This is so beautiful. That's the Great Society for you, and those are the lush [buildings]." You gonna take that, the Bronx?
The Daily News sent a reporter up to Co-op City to get reactions, and he didn't come back empty-handed. "Mitchell-Lama gave me a chance to have a place to call my own," said Leonard Murrell, a 76-year-old retired city Housing Authority manager who bought a three-bedroom unit in 1971 for $5,000. "I was renting when I came to Co-op City, and now I own. It's my piece of the pie. I came from poverty and worked my way up." Councilman Jimmy Vacca (D-Bronx) asked, "How dare he? I'd like to know the last time Glenn Beck stepped into Co-op City."
And Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. sent us a statement:
"It is unfortunate that, in an attempt to promote his ideology, Glenn Beck felt the need to attack Co-op City. Co-op City is a great place to live, evident in the fact that close to 55,000 people make their home there. Glenn Beck is wrong on just about every issue—from gun control to immigration to health care—and now he is wrong about the Bronx as well. Glenn Beck does not know the Bronx and does not know Co-op City, and it might be helpful to him to visit our borough and see the many wonderful things that are happening here before he runs his uniformed mouth in the future."
To be sure, Co-op City has had its share of problems over the years; the original construction was shoddy, the complex defaulted on its loan from New York State's Housing Finance Agency, and in 2007 a former board president was convicted of corruption for a kickback scheme with a painting contractor. (We're sure there would be no taint of corruption in Beck's Ayn Randian privatized utopia.) But renovations over the past decade have greatly improved the complex's 35 high rise buildings, and for tens of thousands of people, it's called HOME—complete with its own schools, planetarium, and firehouse.
Of course, Beck—who resides in a $4.2 million walled-off estate in Connecticut—probably considers life in Co-op City as slumming it. Please stick to theater criticism, Mr. Beck.
Tagged
co-op city
glenn beck
the bronx
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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