Bill de Blasio's Excellent PR Adventure

 Bill de Blasio's two terms as Mayor of New York City have shown a certain consistency. A very fast-talking con man (he can talk his way around even the most pointed question that nails him dead to rights- for examples, listen to his weekly appearances on a certain radio program [1]), de Blasio's modus operandi is to gaslight people with grandiose "liberal" rhetoric while instituting reactionary policies behind people's backs. In this, he is in the mold of the Democratic Party's poohbah's, Obama and The Two Clintons. Indeed, de Blasio comes from the Clinton's machine, having managed Hillary Clinton's first campaign for U.S. Senate from New York State. If anything, Bill de Blasio is Bill Clinton on steroids, a guy who talks faster and is more disingenuous. An expert sophist, de Blasio manages to rationalize away any damning evidence against him.

Another consistency: he mostly did the opposite of what he promised to do as a candidate (and what he continually claims to be doing). His positive accomplishments are mainly one: pre-K school for children. Give him credit for that, and that's pretty much it. Otherwise it's betrayals and attacks on people's well-being.

Perhaps his most egregious crime has been his full-throated defense of police brutality. The city police (NYPD) brutally assaulted for months on end the protesters who took to the streets in the wake of the graphic murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis, Minnesota police. De Blasio consistently vilified the victims of NYPD violence.

Now what is this Excellent Public Relations Adventure of which I spoke in the title? First this introduction to the theme.

One de Blasio scam was baiting people to get COVID vaccines by offering a $100 "incentive." Only they don't pay up. To illustrate the point, I could relate one person's attempt to get paid, an exercise in utter futility, but that story is too lengthy for this essay. Just briefly, the contractor that is supposed to pay, an outfit called "akimbo," doesn't mail the debit cards, doesn't respond to emails, and is unreachable by phone. City employees for their part put people on a runaround treadmill and tell the victims to inform "akimbo." To add injury to injury, "akimbo" makes extra money selling the emails of the vaccinated to spammers. Immediately after getting vaccinated, the vaccine-related spam starts arriving- the $100 debit card never does.

I have a suspicion that de Blasio never had any intention of paying people. At the least, he doesn't care.  He just wants to be able to boast about how he got people to submit to vaccination. 

Now, de Blasio's Excellent PR Adventure: He pulled a similar stunt to the "vaccine incentive" trick  the first week of December, when he announced- informing nobody in advance, and  consulting with no one, according to the New York Times- that henceforth businesses would be required to insist that their employees be vaccinated.  And that everyone, even children as young as five, would have to be vaccinated if they wanted to eat in a restaurant or enter any other public place. All 184,000 New York City businesses were now under Mayoral orders to REQUIRE all their employees to be vaccinated for the new coronavirus, and to screen all people entering their premises for COVID vaccination status. No exceptions, and no option to be tested for infection in lieu of vaccination.

The fact that there was no plan for any of this, and that he never even discussed it with city officials before announcing it, gives the game away. It's not real, but typical de Blasio smoke and mirrors.

Self-styled caudillo de Blasio's edict nominally takes effect December 27. De Blasio will stop being mayor on January 1st, 5 whole days later. His successor has been coy on whether he will enforce the decree of his predecessor. Even though there is no mechanism to enforce this imperial ukase, media in New York City has given a platform to the frenzied overreactions of a few selected  individuals from "the business community." Thus adding to the illusion that de Blasio actually DID something, as opposed to ANNOUNCING something. ANNOUNCING things that never actually happen has been a hallmark of de Blasio's mayoralty. He's very big on making Grand Announcements, such as there will be "zero traffic fatalities" in New York City, and how he'll build- indeed IS building, "affordable housing," a phrase he must have uttered hundreds of times. 

De Blasio has reaped national media attention for several days running so far for his latest stunt. He even got some international media coverage, for example by the BBC, the main global propaganda arm of the British government. That is the payoff.

But what is the point? Is de Blasio merely a political exhibitionist? Does he have an insatiable need for attention because of a swollen ego? Actually he's running for Governor of New York State (state capital is the city of Albany, a nothingburg far to the north). He's been term-limited out of the Mayoralty of New York City because of a law passed by the city's voters in a referendum, a law that a previous Mayor, Michael Bloomberg Billionaire, ignored and illegally ran for a third term, which he won. His opposition includes the current Governor, Kathy Hochul, who inherited the seat after Governor Andrew "The Molester" Cuomo was forced out and his mousy lieutenant governor, Ms. Hochul, was automatically elevated to the top job. Also vying to grab the top political rung in the state was state attorney general Letitia James, until she announced on December 9th she was quitting. On the same day, Hochul publicly endorsed James' reelection for state AG, indicating prearrangement between the two. Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi is also running. (Another announced candidate for Governor in the 2022 election is Jumaane Williams, who was just elected last month as New York City Public Advocate. Ambitious, no?) These are all Democrats competing in the upcoming June Democratic Primary. [2]

Cuomo was finally exposed as a compulsive molester, and for his role in causing the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents and covering it up. Those things, along with the media finally reporting what they knew for years, that Cuomo is a rage-filled, abusive bully, finally pried his fingers from the levers of power.

De Blasio is deeply unpopular in New York City, with 8 million people has almost half the state's population. Outside of the City, the state is quite reactionary, so de Blasio will have to jettison his fake-liberal outer garb. His opponents will try to keep him from getting away with it. But de Blasio is probably thinking back to how he won the city mayoralty. Low in the polls, he ran in a crowded field, which enabled him to emerge on top.

And de Blasio has "raised his profile" with his latest high-handed "mandate."

If de Blasio were somehow to climb up the next rung of the political ladder, he only good thing would be Andrew Cuomo damaging his teeth by gnashing them. Cuomo as Governor had a hobby of making de Blasio's life miserable. It appeared he did it just for sport, as a cat tortures a captive mouse. What poetic justice that would be for the venal, execrable Cuomo!

My latest scam is working like a charm! Albany Governor's Mansion, Here I Come!

  

1]  For years, de Blasio has been hosted every Friday for an hour on "The Brian Lehrer Show" on "public" radio station WNYC, in New York City. WNYC.org. Brian Lehrer, a classic dweeb, always lets the Flim-Flam Man get away with his evasions. Callers who call in to complain about being screwed by the de Blasio regime would be parried with some Clintonian-like "I feel your pain" verbal jujitsu. No matter what he did, nothing could ever be de Blasio's fault.

 

De Blasio is more slippery than a greased eel and can seemingly fast-talk his way out of anything. While Trump could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and not lose any support, as he boasted, de Blasio could do it and talk his way out of it with a gusher of verbiage.

2] Letitia James gave as a reason to remaining in theattorney general spot ongoing important cases. These cases are a civil suit against the crook Donald Trump, who inflates the value of his assets to get bank loans, and deflates them on his tax returns. She is also working to strip the National Rifle Association of its registration as a charity in New York State, stemming from the major corruption by its top officials who have used millions of NRA funds for personal expenditures. The NRA tried to evade liability by filing a frivolous bankruptcy claim, which the courts rejected.
 

Evil Propagandist Dies, And Some U.S. Media Hails Him As A Great Man

   A "legend," an "icon," these are words being used on radio "news" stations and elsewhere to describe the noxious, destructive purveyor of ignorant lies Rush Limbaugh, whose cigar smoking caught up with him at the age of 70, dead after "a battle with" lung cancer. (Susan Sontag demolished the obnoxious propaganda habit of describing people with diseases as "battling" the disease in her book "Illness As Metaphor.") (Most people don't read much except junk, so they won't be informed of how evil Limbaugh was.)

Why hail such a malign creature? Treating hard rightwing propagandists and its purveyors as respectable and legitimate gives them credence. The establishment power structure's propaganda system does this to indoctrinate the populace in reactionary ideology and lies that benefits the class interests of the rich and their corporate vehicles. This why even though "liberals" and "the liberal media" were constant targets of Limbaugh's mendacious vituperation, he was never honestly reported or commented on by those elements of the power structure.

You must understand that Limbaugh was part of a much larger phenomenon. Rich oligarchs who control several thousand radio stations in the U.S. decided to flood the airwaves with reactionary agit-propaganda spewed by demagogues into the ears of millions of people. Limbaugh was the most prominent of these- but not even the worst. [For example, Michael Weiner, who goes by the apt pseudonym "Michael Savage," is even worse.] [1]

Instead of sane, rational commentary, people's minds are assailed by neo-fascist rabble-rousing demagogues that the monopoly owners of U.S. radio stations have decided are fit fare to indoctrinate the American public with ultra-reactionary attitudes and warped versions of reality.

Why was Limbaugh so execrable? To prove the point  would be like trying to succinctly explain what was so awful about Nixon. It takes at least a book to do the topic justice. And just citing a few examples looks like picking and choosing. But every day, for decades, Limbaugh spewed reactionary poison into the eardrums of idiots who lapped up his lies.

Like all privileged fascists, Limbaugh was an extreme hypocrite who was addicted to illegal drugs while frequently demanding that other people (especially blacks)  who used outlawed drugs be given draconian prison terms or even be executed. (Limbaugh himself escaped punishment for his own lawbreaking of course.)

Limbaugh was a sexist, racist dog who specialized in character assassination. Just one example: In 2019 he falsely asserted that TV commentator Krystal Ball posed nude for photos at age 14.

Limbaugh spewed thousands of malicious lies during his "career," and it would be impossible to list them all here. So these are but a few of them.

Limbaugh helped kill many people by pooh-poohing the seriousness of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, which as of this writing has killed about half a million people in the U.S.

Limbaugh didn't just deny global warming, of course, he even denied the fact that CFC's destroy ozone in the upper atmosphere. Not even reactionary scientists deny this.

Limbaugh aided and abetted Trump's coup attempt by incessantly peddling the Big Lie that the Democrats "stole" the 2020 presidential election, a lie equivalent to the Nazi lie that Germany lost World War I because Jews stabbed Germany in the back. Equivalent in being a total fabrication and equivalent in being a malign political lie with terrible consequences.

It is a relief that Limbaugh in effect killed himself by his noxious habit of smoking cigars. He thought this anti-health practice was sticking it to the rest of us. Being anti-social is what reactionaries think is brave non-conformity. Being dead wrong is their idea of "independent thinking." 

Good riddance to a destructive creature.

Sucking on symbolic phalluses did the gay-hating Limbaugh in. Ironic, yes?

1] Mark Crispin Miller offers some revelations about "Savage." See "Mark Crispin Miller's Revelations About Gay Homophobic Crypto-Nazi 'Michael Savage.'"

Limbaugh spent 30 years excreting anti-human agit-propaganda into the airwaves. If you want to sicken yourself by investigating some of his revolting neo-fascist record, you can start with:

"Rush Limbaugh, Bigoted King Of Talk Radio, Dies At 70," HuffPost, 2/17/21; "The Life and Death of a Woman-Hater," New York Times, 2/20/21 [nice to see some establishment media do some truth-telling about Limbaugh]; and "RIP RUSH LIMBAUGH, WHO SPENT HIS ENTIRE LIFE ON THE GOVERNMENT DOLE," The Intercept, 2/19/21.