Mike & The Media

C'est tres gauche to declare yourself ahead of your time but goshdarnit if Mr NYC wasn't ahead of his time in calling out how the media covered Mike Bloomberg during his 12 years as mayor.

As the former mayor and current multi-billionaire campaigns for president, breaking all spending records in the process, his time as mayor is coming under scrutiny. This is only fair for someone who governed -- really ruled -- the nation's biggest city for more than a decade and is now asking to be promoted to the nation's highest office. Certainly, if Bloomberg wins the nomination as president, I'll vote for him but cannot say I'm excited at the process.

But what's also coming under scrutiny is how Bloomberg was able to shut down the ususal media barrage of criticism and complaints and "disses" that every mayor and public official has to deal with. With his money, he basically bought off special interest groups that would otherwise break his balls and he intimidated the press into giving him glowing coverage. Now he's trying to do the same thing at the national level -- but it isn't working.

Perfect example of how Bloomberg was covered vs. De Blasio, his successor: whenever De Blasio goes to the gym to work out for an hour, the media slams him. When Bloomberg flew to Bermuda on his private plane every weekend, the media said nothing. 

Read this big article about how Bloomberg "owned" the NYC media as mayor and then read some of blog posts from 2007-2013 -- and you'll see how prescient yours truly was in seeing how this mayor and possible president operated then -- and now.