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Video: City Hall Reporters Glibly Joke About Stop & Frisk Using Gangnam Style

By

Christopher Robbins

Published Mar 25, 2013

Modified Mar 25, 2013

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And they say journalism is dead

 

By

Christopher Robbins

Published Mar 25, 2013

Modified Mar 25, 2013

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On Saturday night, members of City Hall and the journalists who are paid to maintain an adversarial relationship with City Hall engaged in their annual display of public onanism. As part of the Inner Circle dinner, a video was produced showing members of the City Hall press corps performing a Gangnam Style parody of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy that the city is currently defending in court.

The skit, if you can sit through more than 10 seconds of it, features the New York Post's CIty Hall Bureau Chief, David Seifman, being stopped and frisked for drinking a large soda. Here's the video, with the complete lyrics at bottom:

Ribald jokes about hot-button issues (they also did a send-up of Dov Hikind's blackface incident) and schmoozing doesn't perturb us as much as the parody's failure to skewer the powerful people sitting in the front row who shield the tactic from serious scrutiny and lie about its impact on the city's crime rate.

Stopping a white man holding a soda actually mimics the NYPD's official stop-and-frisk training policy in that they both have no basis in reality.

Here's another hilarious stop-and-frisk video produced with the help of the NYPD.

And the immortal lyrics to the Stop and Frisk Gangnam Style. (And in case you're wondering what they mean by "dickle," here's this.):

we've got big hands but we know how to use them gently we're stopping by in neighborhoods where they don't drive a Bently

we don't know why lawyers for the perps say its a big deal
we're just trying to cop a feel

drinking soda here
is definitely a big no no

nursing babies here
is something everyone must forgo

in some neighborhoods they don't appreciate our efforts, think that
we're not fair, think that we're not fair
latinos, and men of color tell us no (no)
we've got to go (go)

in a pickle we like to dickle in their hood
we think it's good

we're just having risky frisk-em style fun fun fun fun fun (Open) frisk em style

frisk em style
frisk em style
frisk em style

Tagged

City hall

freedom of the press

mayor bloomberg

stop and frisk

Christopher Robbins

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Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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