Mike Bloomberg has on many counts been an excellent Mayor. This was a guy who was a Democrat in the 1990s. He became a Republican to avoid the Democratic primary. I don't blame him. Then he ran for Mayor as an Independent. I have been an Independent myself since 2008.
I have had my policy disagreements with the Mayor, no doubt. The guy does exhibit a little bit of a class bias. But all along I have admired his entrepreneurial journey. He was a tech entrepreneur long before this city started producing those. He has been a remarkable person.
And his astounding business and management skills he has applied to the governance of the city, many times with great results. This has been a great city to live in.
But it is beneath him to take active part in the Democratic primary. For one, he is not a Democrat. I am sure the Democratic Party would love it if he were to join the party now, but I doubt he will. As a non Democrat and office holder it is unbecoming of him to play the role he has been playing.
If he keeps doing it, it is going to create a stink. His legacy is going to suffer for it. He should stay focused on governing the city. He should leave the mayoral election to the various contenders of the Democratic Party.
To be fair, I don't know much about Christine Quinn. I know her name, I have seen her picture, I know she is Speaker at the city level, and I think it is great that she is gay. But I don't know her, I have not read up on her.
But if the Mayor tries too hard, it is going to look like he or his people were the ones who planted that story in the New York Times that got Bharara all excited. A stink like that can cost a man his legacy.
We had a great crowd at the Presidential Debate Watch Party last week cheering on President Obama and hope you will join us for Round 2!
Your support is crucial to ensuring President Obama's re-election. Please join ComptrollerJohn Liu to laud President Obama as he again demonstrates his leadership and shares his plans to move our country forward.
Admission is free with cash bar, drink specials and appetizers. See you on Tuesday night!
When: Tuesday, October 16 from 8:30pm to 10:30pm
Where: Albella's at 10 Reade Street between Lafayette and Elk Streets in Lower Manhattan
John Liu was in the lead. Then the Chinese soldier in the US Army succumbed to racism, committed suicide. John Liu organized protest events, made some noise. And he got targeted. The FBI created a slight stink around him and drove down his poll numbers. It was a deliberate institutional attack. It was racist.
Goes on to show it is harder being an Asian American in this city than it is to be a gay woman who is friends with a Mayor who is not from her party, or a white guy married to a black woman, or a black guy who ran for Mayor and lost.
But the Asian American is within striking distance of getting the second most powerful political office in the country. It can still happen. Although I don't see me getting too involved personally. I have yet to attend an Obama event this year. And I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in all of New York City.
I expect to be too busy with my work to do much volunteering in 2013.
But it is not like I will not be watching. John Liu's chances are as strong as ever.
Although I must admit it is an interesting field of candidates. And a Democrat is about to clinch the office in, gosh, in a long, long time.
We realized that for all of Jeremy Lin’s accomplishments, we as Asians are still different, are still seen differently than other races by the vast majority of Americans...... The truth is, racism toward Asians is treated differently in America than racism toward other ethnic groups. This is a truth all Asian Americans know. While the same racist may hold back terms he sees as off-limits toward other minorities, he will often not hesitate to call an Asian person a chink, as Jeremy Lin was referred to, or talk about that Asian person as if he must know karate, or call him Bruce Lee, or consider him weak or effeminate, or so on....... Bullying against Asian Americans continues at the highest rate of any ethnic group. I remember, when I was taking the Asian American literature course, an article in a major magazine that ran pictures of (male) Asian models above the tagline, “Gay or Asian?” I remember a video that went viral last year in which people explained why men prefer Asian women and why women dislike Asian men. Some of the women on the video were Asian American...... Racist jokes were told with alarming frequency for a school billed the “most liberal in the South,” and I was friends with two groups: one mostly white, mostly Southerners in the same dorm; the other mostly black, with whom I played pick-up basketball. They joked without censor. I had a girlfriend whose aunt and uncle lived in North Carolina, and when we went to visit, they would say that at least I wasn’t black, often before some racist diatribe. This seemed the predominant sentiment then. At least I wasn’t ____. ...... Don Lee’s story collection, Yellow. In Lee’s stories, Asian American characters experience racist incident after racist incident, but these incidents are mostly background to their lives as sculptors, surfers, lovers, etc. The characters are very much of the world in which they live, the world in which I lived and a different world than the one in which white people live with the privilege of their color...... In class, the white students were incredulous. They claimed such acts of racism could never happen with such frequency. Yet if anything, to me, the racism seemed infrequent, and with minimal effect on the characters’ lives. I had grown up constantly wavering between denying and suspecting that my skin color was behind the fights picked with me, the insults, the casual distance kept up even between myself and some of my closest friends. Sometimes—in retrospect: oftentimes—these incidents were obviously rooted in race. I have been called “chink” and “flat face” and “monkey” many many times. And it is the context of these words that make a child grow uncomfortable with who he is, that instill a deep fear in him....... I remember watching, in one middle school class, a video meant to teach us that blackface and sculptures of big-lipped black people and stereotypes of watermelon and fried chicken were wrong. Later that same year, one of my best friends drew a picture of a square with a nose poking off of one side. I knew this was me even before he said it. Sometimes my friends would ask me to do the trick where I put my face against the table, touching both my forehead and my chin to the wood. I thought of this as a special ability, but underneath, I knew I should be ashamed........ I pretended it didn’t bother me. ...... That was the same year my closest childhood friend suddenly cut me off. We had been inseparable, but at the start of that school year, he made fun of me and seemed to use this attack to springboard into popularity. I spent many nights during those first few weeks of school crying myself to sleep, not understanding why we weren’t friends anymore......... the people who had hurt him most were those closest to him...... but also because they were the people in books and because I, too, feared the label, or at least told myself I did. What that fear really is, it seems to me now, is a fear of not being taken as seriously as the White Male Writer, who has so long ruled English literature...... He said something like, “Nobody ever talks about Asians,” and I said, “Asians don’t exist in Sociology.” We both laughed. It was a joke, but it stung with a certain truth. ...... it is a very real complaint that Asian descent seems to count against us in those same admissions numbers. Both Harvard and Princeton are currently under investigation on charges of racism toward Asians, whose grades and SAT scores, on average, must be higher than those of other races in order to gain admissions..... Why aren’t we happy with our disproportionate admissions and the many children who grow up to be doctors and lawyers, pushed by their parents? (The more sarcastic answer: why aren’t white people happy enough with EVERYTHING?).......... Writers always seem to mention how hard Lin works, and often mention this as a trait of Asian Americans. They mention that he went to Harvard, how smart he is. They mention that he is humble. When I wrote about the “Chink in the Armor” headline here, a commenter responded by pointing to Asian Americans being too respectful to speak up against racism. This respectfulness, he said, was something he admired about Asians...... But the positive stereotypes people think they can use because of their “positivity” continue (and worsen) the problem. Thinking you can call an entire race “respectful” is thinking you can classify someone by race, is racism. Which is what is happening to Jeremy Lin when he is called “hard-working” instead of “skilled” ..... . After ESPN ran the “Chink in the Armor” headline, the writer of the headline made a very defensive apology in which he claimed to be a “good person” who didn’t know the weight of the word he was using. He was fired, and this apology came afterward. ...... “Chink” is a very common term, probably the most common slur against Asians..... I had let a Korean American slip into my novel in a supporting role, a character who never finished his sentences, who was always cut-off or cutting himself off. .... But then a strange thing happened. I got used to seeing Koreans, and was surprised whenever I saw a white person. And after some time, not like the sudden realization in the mirror but a gradual process, I began to see myself as a person from this country. I wrote my first story with a Korean character, and something in it, the vulnerability, the honesty, clicked. In Korea, I had different differences than in America. Not that race was out of the picture—the biggest shock to people was my culture, in spite of my skin color, my inability to speak Korean—but it was like looking at race from the inside out, the opposite of how I had been forced to see myself my whole life. It was a lesson: that I had control over my differences, that I could choose to build them up or break them down, that they were not simply genetic, something that had never been true in America
Chinese-American leaders came to the defense of the embattled city comptroller, John C. Liu, on Thursday, comparing the federal inquiry into his campaign fund-raising to what has been called a hazing campaign before the death of Pvt. Danny Chen. .... Mr. Liu’s campaign fund-raising troubles were fanned by potent forces determined to prevent him from becoming mayor in 2013. ..... invoked Private Chen, a Chinatown native who apparently committed suicide in Afghanistan in October after being subjected to harsh treatment by fellow soldiers .... “I see another assassination. This is a character assassination. Worse than death, you lose your good name.” .... The news conference was the first time some of Mr. Liu’s ardent backers had voiced their support in so public and unified a fashion, after months of what they said was nonstop negative publicity. .... Mr. Liu has not been accused of wrongdoing. .... “This is politics,” said Nora Chang Wang, a commissioner at the Department of Employment under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. “When people see him as a viable candidate, such a strong solid candidate for that highest position in the city, in a way it’s a threat.” ..... Another former city official, Hugh H. Mo, a lawyer who was a deputy police commissioner under Mayor Edward I. Koch, said Mr. Liu had been denied due process. “I believe it is an effort to destroy John, who really represents the hopes and aspirations of Asian-Americans, and particularly Chinese-American immigrants,” Mr. Mo said. “We take pride in John.” .... the city’s leading Chinese-language newspaper, World Journal, sent three reporters, and two others, Sing Tao Daily and China Press, each sent two
When I showed up for John Liu's inauguration and the after party, I got the sense that John Liu feels like Bill Thompson deserved to have another shot at the top job. It was not explicit, but it was implied, it was in the air. And that was a statement to how genuinely and strongly John Liu felt about Thompson's candidacy. They really like each other. Thompson's margin was closer than anyone thought, way closer than I expected.
Personally I was rooting for Bloomberg for deeply personal reasons. (Independent For Bloomberg) And I really liked the emphasis on immigration and immigrants that the Mayor put during the inauguration ceremony. Immigration colored the entire inauguration ceremony. (The Dumbfuck Immigration Laws) I loved that. He has been an excellent Mayor. He is a personal hero of mine. (Larry Ellison) He not only brought business sense to city government procedures, running for and being Mayor has been the best business move he ever made. Look at what that did to his net worth. His company's market valuation went up and up.
And it was great to have John show up for this Holi event put together by the Madhesis in town: Happy Holi. He did not show up for the votes. There were hardly any voters in the room. I greatly appreciated that. Although I feel like I have a doctor-patient relationship with the Madhesis of New York City. ("Madisey") Internalized prejudice is as big a problem as prejudice.
But then there are friendships, political loyalties, party affiliations, and then there is politics.
My Number One Prediction For 2013
All sorts of motherfuckers are going to run for Mayor in 2013. It is going to be one crowded Democratic primary. There is going to be no particular itch for Bill Thompson. If it is going to be Bill Thompson's year, the dude is going to have to prove himself all over again, almost from scratch.
That is going to be a statement on the long shadow Mayor Bloomberg has cast over this city for a decade. People are not going to wait in line. There is no line. There never has been. You don't wait in line. That is not how democracy works.
Three Years: A Very Long Time In New York City Politics
John Liu doing a good job as City Comptroller for three years and being in the news for three years is not going to be the same John Liu who spoke at his inauguration and introduced his brothers "Bobby and Teddy." The only reason for John to not run for Mayor would be because he feels it is better to seek guaranteed reelection than to take an iffy shot at the mayoral office.
The problem with that risk averseness is if he does a lousy job as Comptroller, his reelection is not going to be guaranteed. If he does a good job, it is going to be very hard for him to resist the enormous grassroots pressure he is going to feel to run for Mayor. Motherfuckers are not going to shy away and make room for Bill Thompson - already people are like Bill who; the same thing happened to Fernando Ferrer, two months after election day people were like, Fernando who - but many of the motherfuckers are going to wilt and wither if John Liu shows up as candidate. He is going to have a Bloomberg like aura for having done a good job as Comptroller.
One Shot: The American Way
Howard Dean did not run for president again in 2008. If it is about running for City Council, you can try it out a few different times, maybe, but that does not apply to the major offices. The office of Mayor of NYC is the number two political office in America. It is a big one. I don't see Bill Thompson even running. 2000 was close for Al Gore also. He did not run again in 2004.
Black Power?
Paterson imploded. Rangel is imploding. Thompson has evaporated already. Bill Perkins is the only black guy in town who appreciated the idea of the first black president. I am surprised he is not running for Congress from Harlem.
12% of America is black. 12% of New York City is Asian. Blacks have had their day. It is time for some Asian power.
As for Rangel, I think I am going to save my compassion for the tsunami victims.
Having What It Takes
John Liu has what it takes. He has the political ingredients. Either you have them, or you don't. John Liu has them. Just look at some facts. No politician in town today is on better terms with labor than John Liu. How did he do that? You got to marvel. He is more popular with blacks than any black politician in town. How did he do that? He earned more votes than Bloomberg last year. How did he do that? The story from last year's election is not that Thompson's margin was close, but that Liu got more votes than Bloomberg. John Liu could have beat Bloomberg, Thompson was not able to. Bill Thompson failed.
2013 Or Never
I am making the judgment call that either John Liu is going to be Mayor in 2013 or he is never going to be Mayor. Democracy asks for basic humility. It is ultimately the voters who decide, and that's the way it should be.
First of all, if he decides not to run despite being the best candidate around, that is going to show he has good political judgment but not good enough.
Second, his not running will mess up all future rounds for him. Look at a few scenarios. Someone else wins. If that person is Democratic, and is so bad that he/she is destined to be a one term Mayor, Liu still could not run in 2017. If he/she is good, Liu can not run until 2021. But if the 2013 person is a one term Mayor, and some other Democrat wins in 2017, that will bar Liu from running against the incumbent in 2021.
Obama needed to run in 2008 or he was just another Evan Bayh. Only John Liu can decide if he will run for Mayor in 2013. But if he runs, I am predicting he will win. (Jupiter And Obama) My grade for work done so far as Comptroller is an A+. If he runs, many of the motherfuckers who might otherwise run will stay out. That is not going to be true if Bill Thompson runs. John Liu has been casting a long shadow. That is remarkable for a dude who is not a billionaire. His power and potential for more power comes from sheer political skills. That is remarkable. That is beyond outstanding.
