Sir Winston Churchill is one of the most revered people who ever lived. The 20th century British statesman and Prime Minister was one of the Allied leaders who, in the Darkest Hour, defeated Nazi Germany in World War II and thereby saved Western Civilization.
And even though he was the quintessential Englishman, Winston Churchill was half-American -- specifically, he was half-Brooklyn.
Sir Winston's mother was from Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Lady Jennie Jerome Churchill was born there in the then-City of Brooklyn in 1854 and, at the age of 20, married Lord Randolf Churchill (giving birth to Winston, her oldest son, in 1875).
Long-story short: one of history's greatest statesman was brought into the world via 21 year-old Brooklyn gal who was one of the first "dollar brides" -- i.e. a rich American given in marriage to the historical but broke British nobility.
Although her famous son would overwhelm her memory, Jennie Jerome had a fascinating -- and scandalous -- life all of her. Many lovers (including a future King Edward VII), a younger second husband (only 16 days older than Winson!), major philanthropic initiatives, and she played a major role in Winston's early political career -- although her death in 1921 precluded her seeing her son's ultimate triumph.
You should read and watch (below) about her amazing life.
Even though Jennie Jerome lived almost her entire adult life in England, she hasn't been forgotten in her hometown. Up in the Bronx there's a playground named in her honor. And doubtless, without the NYC grit she gave her eldest son, the history of the world would be very different.
Tomorrow is Primary Day in New York, and the fate of many political careers for State and Federal elected officials will be decided.
The big ones are the Democratic Congressional Primaries between Congressman Dan Goldman and former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, and multiple candidates (including Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of the late President Kennedy) who are running to replace retiring Congressman Jerry Nadler.
In heavily Democratic NYC these primaries are usually more important than general elections. And for decades incumbents almost always won -- there have been a few exceptions, including AOC's big 2018 victory, but VERY few -- which meant that winning a primary was almost like a Papal election (if you won a primary or survived a primary challenger, you could serve for decades). For example, I remember 20 years ago there was a nasty primary in Brooklyn to replace the retirning Congressman Major Owens; then-City Councilwoman Yvette Clark won and she's been in office ever since.
There 'ya go.
But in the last few years incumbents have been less-and-less bullet-proof in primaries: Queens/Bronx Congressman Joe Crowley lost to AOC in 2018, then Bronx Congressman Eliot Engel lost to Jamaal Bowman in 2020 and then Bowman lost in 2024 to now-Congressman George Latimer. Lots of state elected have also lost their seats in primaries in recent years. And it's expected than Goldman will proabably lose to Lander and that Congressman Espaillat might lose to a strong challanger. This article talks about the shifting sands of primary politics in NYC -- even if you get elected to Congress, your own party might throw you out in a few short years.
To quote former British Prime Minister John Major, "Politics is a rough old trade."
As the British King and Queen visit America, it's a nice time to remember that, while England might be America's Mother Country, a lot of English people have found NYC to be a nice place to visit -- or even move to.
Including the Royals -- I've blogged a lot about royal excursions in NYC, and this big Vanity Fairarticle is all about their favorite hotel to stay in while visiting the city.
After all, the bond between NYC and England is inescapable: the City of New York is named after the City of York in England -- although obviously the sequel has far surpassed its OG namesake.
Anyway, here's a couple of interesting documentaries about English people in NYC -- including one about gay icon Quentin Crips aka The Naked Civil Servant. Enjoy!
In the summer of 1996 I spent six weeks as a student at the London School of Economics. It was a nice experience, got some college credits, and enjoyed living in a foreign city (albeit one where people spoke English) on my own for the first and last time in my life (so far).
My life in London during those weeks was relatively quiet -- I lived in a small room of a student residence and was either studying, writing papers, walking the streets, going to museums (falling in love with the paintings of Camille Pisaro), or reading books about Woody Allen and listening to the Velvet Underground. Also, I remember that this was the time and place where I learned that you could put oil and vinegar on turkey sandwiches (something I love to this day), that I could buy achohol legally at the age of 19, that the British smoke like crazy (every restaurant and bar and public space I went to was basically one big cloud), and that I might have been able to hook up with a really gorgeous Chilean lady but was too shy to do so.
Anyway, what I was not aware of, apparently, is that culturally 1996 was a big year in the UK -- as evidenced below by this interview with a journalist who calls 1996 the wildest year in the wildest decade. My experience in the UK in 1996 was far from wild but I wuz 'dere! at that time and it's weird to hear this guy give an in-depth historical perspective about a time and place that I remember well but wasn't involved in -- so close and yet so far.
What I do remember quite clearly as that 1996 was a notable year for British filme: Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year and Trainspotting also came out giving the world Ewan McGregor and introducing the world to the Scottish heroin subculture.
And that's not the only sense of deja vu I had this week. I was just listening to an interview with the actor Jon Cryer -- Ducky from Pretty in Pink, the not-Charlie Sheen character from Two and a Half Men, Superman's nephew in Superman IV and lots of other stuff. Anyway, in this interview he briefly mentioned that, when he was really young, he was an usher at Equity Library Theater on 103rd Street and Riverside Drive when he was a kid. That was hilarious because ... drumroll ... I also worked at ELT as a kid! I wasn't an usher, I worked concessions, but it's so crazy that we both worked at low-level jobs at ELTs in the 1980s. I only did it for a few months in 1989, years after Jon, but still ... I wuz 'dere! Again, so close and yet so far.
The former presidents of Brazil and France have gone to jail for treason and corruption too.
But not here. Not in the USA. Not in a country where we say that all men are created equal. Nope. If you're a Donald Trump or one of his associates, you float above the law -- and the media and half of the public are okay with it.
You can engage in blatent corruption and violence and get away with it.
This is a shameful, dark chapter in American history that we're living through. One day I hope it might end.
Recently I discovered that I'm a descendant of Andrew Corsa.
Who's he?
He was a farmer born in 1762, and he owned property in what is today the Bronx where Fordham University now stands.
Most notably he was a "Westchester Guide" (the Bronx being part of Westchester back then) during the Revolutionary War. In July 1781, he helped General George Washington and Count Rochambeau navigate the Bronx, doing reconnaisance with them about British troop locations and movements. It burnished his legend.
Corsa also had two wives and 13 children, and some untold number of great and great-great and great-great-great and beyond grandchildren.
And Mr NYC is one of them.
Also, the Corsas are on the map! In the Bronx there is an avenue named after Andrew Corsa called ... Cosa Avenue! Here it is:
And in doing some more Corsa research I found ... this ... apparently 14 years ago the was a YouTube channel (and perhaps a public access show as well) called CorsaAveTV. It's something! Enjoy.
When Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor last November, it was declared that he would be the 111th mayor of New York City.
But ... not so fast.
A deep-dive into the municipal archives reveals that -- in the 17th century -- when NYC was a new city and the mayors were appointed by the British government -- a man named Matthias Nicolls in 1674 briefly served as the city's chief executive.
Nicolls had been mayor before, then left office, but it appears that he was reappointed as mayor before departing quickly again. So Mamdani will technically be the 112th mayor.
It appears that there was no nefarious reason for this oversight -- it was simply a slip of the historical record.
Just another example of how the history of NYC is forever fascinating.
There are, and have been, royal scandals galore -- Mrs Fitzherbert! Mayerling! Rasputin! Wallis Simpson! Epstein! Megxit!
And, of course, Diana.
Her notoriously failed 1980s marriage to the then-Prince of Wales/now King Charles III has become the stuff of legend.
The irony is that, while the marriage itself was a failure, as a royal union it was a huge success: Diana produced an heir and a spare, and they've now produced heirs and spares. The marriage of Charles and Diana may not have lasted but its legacy has kept the dynastic royal line for the House of Windsor secure for the rest of this century.
But did you know that the future Monarchs of the United Kingdom have not only American but also NYC blood?
See, Princess Diana's great-grandma was a New York-native named Frances Ellen Work. She was a classic "dollar bride", a rich new money American who married a broke English bloke with a title.
The marriage was as big a disaster as Frances Ellen's great-granddaughter's -- and Frances' father forced them to get divorced and bring her two sons back to America (much like Queen Elizabeth would force her son to divorce Diana and hand over their two sons). Frances Ellen's rich American father not only hated his British ex-son-in-law but gnerally hated the lust of Britain's nobility for American women and money.
And here we get to a hinge of history.
Frances Ellen's father stipulated in his will that his sons must never go back to England. They must agree never to set foot in the UK or forfeit their $14 million inheritance. But, when the old man died, the sons appealed to their relatives -- who had also inherited money -- to see if they would agree to waive this clause and let them get their cash without the travel restriction. They agreed. And then one of the sons, Edmund, moved to the UK, married a woman named Ruth, and they had a daughter named Frances. This Frances then married Viscount Spencer and their daughter Diana would then go into history.
Imagine, for moment, if Edmund's relative's had so no. Imagine if they had enforced this clause. Edmund wouldn't have moved to the UK, married, and fathered Princess Diana's mother. And the course of British and world history would be very different.
But it's not. And one day the crown of the UK will be worn by someone with NYC lineage.
Listen to this great podcast about the life and legacy of Frances Ellen Work. It's a story of booze, bucks, broads, gambling, divorce, and glittering crown.
I was sad to learn this week that the wonderful British actress Pauline Collins has died at age 85.
She had a long career in movies, TV, and the stage. Her most notable role was for the play and then the movie Shirley Valentine in the late-1980s. In fact, in 1989 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress and had the honor of being given it by Mr. Steve Martin:
But I first saw Pauline in the early 1970s TV series Upstairs, Downstairs where she played the parlor maid Sarah -- a young and motivated working class woman who refused to accept her station in life. She was so good in the role, her performance so touching and heartbreaking, she etched a memorable, multi-layered character that I remember decades after I first saw it.
If you can ever call a movie nothing more than an expression of pure joy, it'd have to be the 1982 classic My Favorite Year.
It's impossible to imagine a movie this funny, well-written, heartfelt and wild coming out today. But back in the early 1980s this old-fashioned comedy gem slipped out.
The year in question is 1954, and a young comedy writer named Benjy Stone from Brooklyn is writing for the country's most popular TV variety show, Stan "King" Kaiser. One week a washed up British movie star named Allann Swan visits to guest star on the show -- and he's drunk and unreliable. Benjy is told to take care of him for the week -- and craziness and hijinks and hilarity ensue.
The plot for this movie is slight -- it's more about the characters, their romances, their hopes, and their fears. And it's about a culture clash, two very different worlds smashing together -- the world of Jewish New York City comedians clashing with the world of a British master thespian, all told through a loving 1950s nostalgia lense.
Benjy is played by a very young Mark Lin-Baker, a few years before his long run on Perfect Strangers and then on Broadway. He's charming, and I don't know why he didn't make more movies, especially since My Favorite Year was a big hit. Alan Swann is played magnificently by Peter O'Toole, a truly titanic performance (he also got an Oscar nomination for it). Joe Bologna, the great character actor, plays a Stan Kaiser and the rest of the supporting cast includes a gorgeous Jessica Harper as Benjy's love interest, Lanie Kazain, and many others. You can tell they all had a lot of fun making this picture.
My Favorite Year is very loosely based on something that happened in the early 1950s when a young Mel Brooks was a writer on Sid Ceasar's variety show. The guest one week was Errol Flynn, the great British movie star of the 1930s and '40s who was also a hopeless drunk. Brooks was tasked with making sure he made it to rehearsals and the show, and that wasn't always easy. Nothing as crazy happened in real life as in in the movie, but it's great premise for a movie -- which is obviously why they made one.
The movie is also a look at a special moment in time when NYC was still the heart of television, and shows like Sid Ceasar's reigned supreme. While they never say what network the fictional Stan Kaiser show is on, most of the movie takes place at 30 Rock so it's obviously supposed to be NBC.
In these dark times, My Favorite Year is a little piece of light.
There's nother weirder than listening to two upper class British dudes talk about NYC politics. Last year they talked about the legal predicament of Mayor Adams (that was interesting/weird) but this conversation, starting at 9:24, is really interesting -- they're impressed by Zohran and his superior political skills.
I hope they interview him sometime -- truly evidence that NYC is the Global City.
Ten years ago, and just last year, Prince William of the United Kingdom visited NYC.
Since the death of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 2022, William has now become the Prince of Wales, the crowned heir apparent to the throne. If all goes according to plan, he will one day become King William V.
But the to-be King William V isn't the first future British monarch to visit NYC. In fact, his previous namesake, King William IV, was in NYC more than two hundred and forty years earlier -- and this William was, in fact, the first British royal ever to visit the city.
Only he wasn't here as a tourist -- the then-Prince William was a 16-year old officer in the British Navy and he'd been sent to the city in September 1781 to fight in the Revolutionary War. As it turned out, he didn't stay long. Soon the British surrendered at Yorktown, the war coming to an end and American independence soon to arrive.
But the then-Prince William's brief stay in NYC wasn't without drama. The leader of the Colonial Army, General George Washington, hatched a plot to kidnap the British royal and use him as a hostage for military strategic leverage. The plot failed and soon was no longer necessary.
The irony is that, at the time, no one thought William would ever become King.
His father, George III, was still in the prime of his literally crazy life. William also had two older brothers who were ahead of him in the line of succession -- William was the spare x 2. And yet family circumstances would lead him to the throne -- after his father died, William's oldest brother became King George IV but he had no legitimate heir. And when their brother Frederick died in 1827 (who also had no legitimate heir), William became the heir to the throne -- and in 1830 George IV died and William became King.
He only ruled for seven years -- he was already 64 year old (the oldest person to become King until the current Charles III in 2022) and his health wasn't great. But during his brief reign, the British parliament enacted major reforms, including the abolition of slavery and the first social welfare programs.
William also had no legitimate heirs and so, after his death in 1837, his 17-year old niece Victoria became Queen, thus beginning the legendary 63-year Victorian age, lasting until the 20th century.
William himself was a bit of a lout -- he loved to drink, party, and he had an Irish actress mistress with whom he fathered ten illegitimate children. He eventually dumped her and made a proper marriage but, with no legitimate heir, his line of the family, the House of Hanover, ended and it would be Victoria's line that would and continues to rule to this day -- including the future William V.
Back in the day, when working class families still lived in Manhattan, it wasn't a crazy idea to make a TV show about them.
Thus was born the very, very, very short-lived series Trinity, about a working class Irish-Catholic family in Hell's Kitchen that ran for less than a month in the fall of 1998.
I vaguely remember when this show aired because it was during my senior year of college and I was living away from the city, pining for it from afar. If I'm correct, it aired on Friday nights so I wasn't really watching TV then but I think I caught a little of it once. It seemed like a heavy, intense drama about miserable white people and, apparently, it completely turned off audiences and was cancelled after only four episodes.
So why remember it? A few reasons.
First, it was a show about working class NYC, the kind of thing you don't really see today. It was about real people living real lives and, if it was airing today, I'd give it a chance.
Second, it was created by John Wells. He was the guy who created the massive TV hit ER just a few years earlier, and this show seemed like it could be another big, popular, and critically acclaimed success. Sadly it was not to be -- but years later he'd create (or re-create from the British version) the show Shameless that ran on Showtime for many years about another working class family (this time in Chicago).
Third, the cast. The patriarch of the family was played by the wonderful actor John Spencer who had appeared on LA Law a few years earlier -- and then, a year after Trinity was cancelled, would return in triumph with The West Wing, staying on it until his untimely death in 2006. Then there was Sam Trammell who, about a decade after this, would appear on the big vampire show True Blood. And yet another actor on the show who would go onto greatness was Bobby Cannavale who would later on appear on Boardwalk Empire and in lots of Marvel movies.
So here's to Trinity, a forgotten NYC that had a brief, moment before its creators and stars went onto big things later on.
If I had the cash to build a palace, I'd build it in a great city by a river.
Imagine living in a huge home, gilt and elegance everywhere, looking out the window and seeing a brilliant cityscape, and then looking out another window and seeing a big placid stream of water.
How lovely, how mesmerizing, how ... rich.
This is not, obviously, an original idea to me. There have been several historic palaces built next to rivers in great cities but today, sadly, most of them are gone.
And here in NYC, we also have phantom riverside palaces -- the lost mansions that used to exist on Riverside Drive in Manhattan.
But foist, to history!
In London, in the medieval era, there was a huge palace on the banks of the River Thames in London called the Savoy Palace. It was huge, gorgeous, and absolutely screamed of power and wealth. Unsurprisingly it was owned by the then-royal family of England, the Plantagenets. Its last resident was John of Gaunt, son of King Edward III, and an important political and military leader of his time -- a kind of guy-behind-the-guy, a Bismark or James Baker or Tywin Lannister kind of guy.
But tragedy befell the Savoy Palace in 1381 when, during the Peasants Revolt, it was burned down, totally destroyed (John of Gaunt had levied a very unpopular tax on the peasants and the peasants let him know what they thought of it). A smart politician, John didn't rebuild the palace -- instead, he made tax reforms and quelled the rebellion, restoring peace.
John of Gaunt is also the grandfather of every British monarch since Henry IV. John and his longtime-mistress/last wife, the gorgeous and amazing Kathrine Swynford, had four kids. John of Gaunt's riverside palace may not have survived but his DNA sure does!
Moving down to Paris, on the right back of the River Seine, used to stand the Tuilleries Palace. It was one of many residences of the French Kings and it was actually built by the great Queen Catherine de Medici herself. The French Kings before the 1789 didn't actually live there much (they soon headed out to Versailles) but in the 19th century it was used by the short-lived monarchs Louise-Phillipe and Louise Napoleon.
But the Tuilleries Palace became another victim of mass fervor when, during the Paris Commune of 1871, it was destroyed, never to be rebuilt. Now it's a massive public park, the Tuilleries Gardens, where families stroll and couples go to ... French.
Sidenote: a forgotten historical figure named Prince Phillipp of Saxe Coburg Gotha was born in the Tuilleries Palace in 1844. He was the brother-in-law and best friend of the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary who, along with a couple of others, discovered Rudolf and his dead mistress at Mayerling in January, 1889. Philipp is an intriguing, pivotal character in Episode 4 of Fall of Eagles (see below, it's an amazing episode). Phillipp also put his crazy cheating wife (who was also his cousin) in an insane assylum and fought a duel with her lover that he lost, and then divorced her. During Word War 1, his son was killed when his son's mistress threw acid in his face. He had a life of both great privilege and great tragedy, an example of late 19th century/early 20th century European monarchy that vanished with the war.
Then there's the Yusupov Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. Built by the insanely wealthy and noble Yusupov family on the banks of the Moika River. It was as huge, as gorgeous, as jaw-droppingly splendid as any palace ever built anywhere. It was (literally) a shining example of Tsarist Russia -- the kind of place that represented everything that the Communists hated and wanted to destroy.
Amazingly, however, the Communists didn't destroy it after the 1917 Russian revolution. It was too big, too impressive, and too useful to destroy. Instead, the Yusopov family fled Russia and the Communists turned into a ministry. Now its a museum. But even though this riverside palace still exists, it's still a phantom -- no one lives there, its original use abandoned, a curiosity of history and not a living part of it.
But what's most interesting about this palace is that while it's huge and gorgeous and an architectural marvel, its best known for something that happened in a basement room in the palace late at night on December 30, 1916. That's the night that Prince Felix Yusupov and his friends killed the mysterious and fake holy man/Tsarist whisperer and advisor Rasputin. They fed him poisoned cakes and wine and, when those failed to kill him, shot him. Rasputin managed to flee outside of the palace where Yusupov and his friends shot him again. Then they chained him up and drove him outside St. Petersburg where they dumped his body into another river. And while Yusopov and his friends thought killing Rasputin would save the Russian monarchy, it was in fact the moment when its doom was sealed.
Okay, so we've delved into history of some of the riverside palaces in London, Paris and St. Petersburg. Let's come home to NYC.
And here you can learn all about the huge, beautiful mansions -- some of them almost as big and gorgeous as palaces -- that were built in the 19th-century on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Obviously no nobles or royals built or lived in them, but they were examples of the Gilded Age, of New Money, of trying to show their European counterparts that they could build great homes as grand as anything in the Old World. And Riverside Drive, that great stretch of road by the watery Western frontier of NYC, seemed like the perfect place.
Sadly, most of these mansions on Riverside Drive are gone today. A couple still exist but, during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, their wealthy residents could no longer afford their upkeep and sold them to developers. The new owners proceeded to knock them down and build apartment buildings -- some quite splendid themselves but not quite as interesting as the mansions they replaced.
This documentary below about the lost mansions, the lost palaces, of Riverside Drive tells the story about ten of these long-gone gems.
And I have a personal interest in this -- one of the mansions mentioned in this documentary was replaced by the building that I grew up in myself and where my family still owns the apartment.
So yeah ... I kinda-sorta-but-not-really-but-want-to-believe that I grew up and lived for years in a kinda-sorta-palace on the riverside of a great city.
And that I have a some stuff in common with other previous residents of riverside palaces, like personal intelligence and elegance, except for ...
John of Gaunt; I mean this guy had it all -- money, power, a hot woman (and women), kids, bling -- I just wouldn't want to have my home burned down.
... or Catherine de Medici but without all the killing.
... or Prince Phillipp of Saxe Coburg Gotha but without putting my wife in a loonie bin or discovering my brother-in-law dead.
... or Prince Felix Yusopov without killing a gross and weird holy man and then fleeing the country.
And if you want to just enjoy the beauty and impressive current day architecture of Riverside Drive, I strongly suggest taking a walk along this most amazing and unique of NYC thoroughfares.
I love history. Even though this is a blog about NYC, I'm obsessed with late 19th and early 20th century European history, the decades where the various rulers of the great empires in Europe made terrible decisions that led to war and revolution -- and shaped the world we live in today.
And in so many ways the lessons that can be learned from that time and place apply to our country and NYC today.
"It was hard to be Tsar." So begins the British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore's book about the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia for 300 years. Ruling an empire, a country, a region or a city is hard work. Well, it's hard if you take the job seriously, if you strive to do it well, if you try not to make mistakes, and if you truly care about the welfare and progress of your people and your land.
But if you don't take it seriously, or handle it badly, catastrophe ensues.
In the years leading up to World War I, three of Europe's biggest empires were ruled by people who were unfit to rule. In short, they were really bad at their jobs. They were incompetent, arrogant, delusional, prone to magical thinking, made huge mistakes, and it all ended in horror.
In Germany there was Kaiser Wilhelm II. An erratic, arrogant, narcissistic man-child, he engaged in building up a navy that Germany didn't need, just to piss of England (and his English relatives), tried to play different countries against each other, fired the best Chancellor that Germany ever had (Bismark), and finally plunged Germany into war in 1914 that forced it to fight on two fronts. Eventually Germany lost the war and Wilhelm fled the country -- leaving his country in ruin, eventually leading to the rise of the Nazis.
In Austria-Hungary, you had Emperor Franz Joseph, an amiable but unimaginable ruler who refused to give the 11 nationalities of his empire any real political sovereignty or respect. He was also vulnerable to demands of his army chiefs who yearned for war, any war, and eventually capitulated to their demands to attack Serbia -- that triggered World War I. Franz Joseph died in 1916, was succeeded by his very young nephew, and eventually Austria-Hungary lost the war, the empire broke up, and Franz Joseph's dynasty, the Habsburgs, lost power after 600 years.
And finally, in Russia, you had Tsar Nicholas II, the most staggeringly dumb man ever to rule a vast empire, who believed he'd be a great ruler because God wanted him to, who refused to make reforms until violence ensued, started wars (like the one with Japan) that Russia list in 1905, oversaw the massacre of Bloody Sunday, and finally plunged Russia into war in 1914 with an army that was totally unprepared to fight. This led to the fall of the Romanovs and the rise of Communism.
Disastrous rulers all -- and some of the people who worked for them were even more insane (like advisors who wanted wars or encouraged repression or ... Rasputin). It was rule by the unserious, rule by the mendacious, and it had very serious and cruel conseqences.
We see this in America today.
Today we are being ruled by reckless and unserious people who are dismantling our government, draining our country's power, condoning criminality and violence and repression, and destroying our nation's reputation. It's a horror show (unless you hate America, in which case it's a triumph).
Closer to home we have Mayor Eric Adams, perhaps the worst and most unpopular mayor this city has ever had, a criminal and a narcissist, a disaster. And he sure doesn't take his job seriously -- Adams has even said that his job, being mayor of the country's biggest city, isn't hard! It's like when Donald Trump told Bob Woodward that he didn't think that the COVID crises was a leadership challenge!
Well, if you don't really care about your job or your city or your country or your people or the challenges facing them ... then leadership is easy. Then it's easy to be the Tsar, or the president, or the mayor, or the whatever. Like school. If you don't care about doing your homework or taking tests or getting good grades, then school is a cinch! But if you do care, well, it's a little harder.
If someone tells you that something that is intrinsically hard is in fact easy, then that is not a serious person -- and that person should never be in a position of power or responsibility.
Last year I did a blog post about the kingdoms of NYC and I included links to a British mini-series from 1974 called Fall of Eagles. In 13 brilliant episodes it dramatizes the 70 years leading up to World War I and the fall of the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires in 1918. I can't praise this show enough -- it's massively entertaining and also shows how the warped personalities and priorities of these rulers and their minions created hell.
I strongly recommend you watch it and you can find all the episodes for free on YouTube here. The best episodes, in my opinion are: Episode 4 about the 1889 Mayerling tragedy; Episode 5 about the Nicholas II and Lenin (played by a very young Patrick Stewart); Episode 9 about the annexation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary; and Episode 10 about the start of World War I.
These episodes most of all demonstrate the failures of people unfit to lead or who operate through delusion and lies. And it makes you look at the people leading America and NYC today and realize that what happened in the past sadly is happening again today here at home.
In 2008, when this blog was less than two years old, I made a trip to China that I blogged about here.
It was the second time in my life that I'd gone to China and, for literally years afterwards, I've been meaning to do another post about my first visit.
The problem is that my first visit was in 1985 when I was eight years old and we were there for a month. So I don't remember everything about it and couldn't, I feel, do a post justice.
But, finally, I will do a post -- picking up random shards of memories from long ago, providing impressions, of my first trip to China 40 years ago with my dad.
What I remember is that, back then, China was still coming out of its first years of hardline Communism. Mao had been dead for less than a decade, and the country had yet to experience the massive economic growth and wealth that defines it today. I remember everyone riding around on ringing bicycles, most people living in small thatched houses like huts, and lots of people walking down the street eating out of rice bowls.
It was, obviously, a very different world from 1980s NYC. Whe started our trip in Shanghai and I don't remember much about it except that, in the hotel lobby, they were playing Madonna's "Like a Virgin" in Chinese and that there was the first of several-to-be-encountered pitchers of boiled water in our room.
Later on we visited cities like Chongqing and also saw the amazing, historic Terracota Warriors that had only been discovered 11 years earlier in 1974.
I remember we went to Beijing and saw the Forbidden City for the first time -- and then one night ate Peking Duck and went to the Chinese circus.
I remember walking around Tiananmen Square, four years before the exploded in deadly riots.
I remember seeing pandas in the zoo for the first time, also the Summer Palace.
I remember we stayed somewhere at a hotel by the river and they would catch fresh fish from the river and serve it in the hotel dining room -- and I'd mash it up into rice and cover it in soy sauce and it was delicious.
I remember we took a cruise down the Yangtze River for more than week, and I'd stand at the prow, pretending to pilot the boat like any eight year old boy would.
I remember long, long train rides where we'd stare out the windows at farmers with huge water buffalo worked the land.
I remember visiting the house that my family built in a city on the sea back in the early 20th century -- and lots of Chinese school kids doing exericess on the beach.
I remember lots of rescheduled Chinese domestic flights on CAAC, the official Chinese airline, that everyone joke stands for "China Airlines Always Cancels."
I remember long drives where I would listen to tapes of "The Chronicles of Narnia."
I remember ending our trip in Hong Kong which was still a British colony at the time. The streets were even narrower than NYC, the wealth of the city fully on display. One day we went to the Royal Yacht Club for a drink -- that was cool! And I remember the huge, gorgeous harbor and the huge boats on it, glowing on the water at night.
I remember that, on our trip home, we flew from Hong Kong to Tokyo and then, flying westward, I remember that my last view of Asia was the gorgeous Mount Fuji shining bright in the night sky.
I remeber that Beverly Hills Cop was the movie being shown on the flight and, after it was over, that another movie called Iceman started but then I fell asleep and, when I awoke, we were back in NYC.
And I remember when I got back that I told everyone about this amazing trip I took -- and no one really cared.
China really is just amazing -- and it's more than a country, it's a civilization with a history we can't even begin to understand. You should go.
And if you want to understand the 20th century history of China, you should watch the 1987 Best Picture Oscar winner The Last Emperor about how the long, long, long reigning Chinese monarchy fell and it led to decades of war, leading to the Communist revolution and country that exists today.
I hope to go back to China one day -- and blog about it better then!
Listen to this brilliant British guy -- and his funny impressions of an American accent -- talk about the 2024 election:
He confesses that there's a lot about the United States that he doesn't understand and wishes that some Americans would enlighten him about how half the country could support a felon/rapist/traitor.
More than once or twice I've blogged about the oddity that is Mayor Eric Adams -- you can read all about it here, no need to rehash it.
This new article elaborates more on this oddness, calling him the "chaos mayor."
But more than cataloguing the mayor's chaotic reign, it also shows how Adams, like other prominent politicians of this era, simply have no idea whatsoever of what it means to be a leader. They spend their time blaming others for their problems, they use overheated crises-ridden rhetoric, they constantly attack the press as being out to get them, and they openly engage in self-pity.
Poor me! Poor me! Everyone's mean to me, I'm a victim, all these conspiracies and dark forces are out to get me!
It's not like they have power or something.
In Adams' case, it comes down to his handling of the migrant problem. When they started coming into NYC, Adams showed that he was overwhelmed and unable to handle it. He said this problem was a "crises" that would "destroy New York City" and that we were about to "lose" the city. When the press asked him how he plans to handle this problem, he told others that they had to provide the answers about how to handle the problem. He demanded severe budget cuts in order to handle the problem -- even though the city is running surplus. Instead of projecting confidence in his skills and in his administration's ability to handle this problem, he basically said "I can't handle it! Oh my god, the city is going down, you tell me how to fix it!"
Real leaders rush into a crises, come up with a plan, handle it in a pragmatic and confident manner, restore order, and fix it. Like that old guy in Godfather II, leaders say "This is the business we've chosen!" and get on with the job, showing that they're in charge and getting things under control. They don't whine and complain, attack their critics and demand pity. They work -- and the positive results speak for themselves and their leadership abilities.
You see this same problem with Trump --- the constant consipiracies, the constant attacks on critics, the constant self-pity. The former British Prime Minster Liz Truss, who managed to the screw up the UK economy in six weeks so badly that her own party kicked her out of office, is now out complaining that the Bank of England and the "blob" that is the UK Civil Service is responsible for her fall -- and not her own decisions. She was Prime Minister when the Queen died in 2022 and apparently Ms. Truss's reaction to this was "Why me?" Can you friggin' believe that?
It wasn't always like this. Leaders led and did the job. Jimmy Carter didn't complain, deflect, or demand pity during the Iran Hostage Crises. Reagan didn't either during Iran Contra. My God, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton got impeached and still worked hard!
Eric Adams, like Trump and Truss and others, doesn't seem to get this. They think serving in high office is an excuse either to live the high life or execute ideological agendas -- not govern, not serve the public. And when things don't go their way, instead of sucking it up and getting to work, they WAAAAAHHHHH!
The thing is, the public is much smarter than these folks. Trump lost the presidency (and hopefully will again), Truss was kicked out, and Adams looks like he'll lose next year.
The people want leaders and problem solvers -- not showboating, self-pitying egomaniacs. You chose this business, get it done.
One month from today there will be a big election, called a General Election, in the United Kingdom -- where the fourteen-year rule of the Conservative Party is expected to end with the Labour Party replacing it.
Ever since I saw the British show "Yes Minister"/"Yes Prime Minister" as a kid, I've been more than midly obsessed with British politics. Therefore, on the night of July 4th, as most Americans will be celebrating our independence from the UK, I'll be feverishly following the UK election results as they trickle in from across the pond.
Even though New York City has been independent from England's "Green & Pleasant" for over 240 years, the British impact on this city is inescapable. After all, this is New York City, after York, a big city in England. And over the years I've chronicled the deep synergy that exists between this city and Britain -- and you can read it all here.
This city would not, could not, exist the way it does today without it's British lineage and influence. And the UK wouldn't exist today without us -- after all Winston Churchill, Britain's savior of a Prime Minister, had a mother from Brooklyn!
If you want to get a literal taste of Britain in NYC, you can visit the great restaurat Tea and Sympathy downtown. And you want to learn more about British politics, you must listen to the excellent podcast the Rest is Politics that is so smart and informative and looks at policy and politics in the UK and beyond.
If you watched the great Netflix show The Crown, about the late British Queen Elizabeth II, it was all about how a country's monarchy survives in a world where most countries are now republics.
For most of human history, most of the world lived under monarchies -- but the last hundred-plus years has seen a reversal with monarchies falling and republics surging (see the brilliant 1974 series Fall of Eagles for more about why this happened).
As a study of history and politics, I'm fascinated by the diference between monarchies and republics. In short, a monarchy is a country ruled by one person and his or her family while a republic is a country ruled by the people. Most revolutions throughout history have been of countries overthrowing their monarchies and becoming republics -- although sometimes, like in Ancient Rome or 19th century France, it goes the other way (more than once).
Today, of course, these things are much more complicated.
In the United Kingdom and some other counties, they have the concept of constitutional monarchies where the people elect a government but the monarch remains a powerless national figurehead. In some supposed republics, however, like North Korea or Russia, there is supposed rule by the people but really these countries are ruled by strongmen and their families -- these pseudo-republics being more authoritarian and monarchical than any real monarchy.
But what exists in both monarchies and republics are dynasties -- families that build wealth and power and then exercise it over the people.
In America, a republic, we have and have had many dynasties: the Adamses, Harrisons, Roosevelts, Kennedies, Tafts, Clintons and Bushes all reaching not only the presidency but other high offices (like Congressional and Senate seats plus Governorships). First they dominate their political parties, then their states, then the country.
Closer to home, we've had multiple New York Governors named Roosevelt and Cuomo (although, in NYC, we've had never had mayors of the same family). However, in super-local politics, we've had many dynasties in the state legislature and various city offices: the Boylans in Brooklyn, the Vallones in Queens, the Diazes in the Bronx, the Molinari's in Staten Island, and others.
Dynasties in NYC politics are as powerful as ever.
That's why I was interested to read about how the former Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright's son Jordan is running for his old seat, seeking to continue a family's power in Harlem and state government. This is how dynasties are made.
Even though NYC is a democracy existing under the framework of state and federal law, it has its own charter divvying up power between the mayor and city council as well as the borough presidents, Comptroller and Public Advocate. And even though this city has multiple dynasties, NYC is not a some kind of 16-century Medici-like Italian city-state under dictatorial rule of one person or family. However, Mayor Adams has just appointed a charter commission charter commission to try to rein in the council's power and increase the mayor's (i.e. his) power. It's a cynical move to become less accountable (where else have we seen this?).
What's interesting to me about the perennial existance of dynasties in democracies, and of power-grabbing politicians like Adams (and other aspiring American tyrants who shall not be named), is that the concept of rule by the people with divided, limited powers, is and forever shall be a boulder being shoved up hill.
By their very nature, people are greedy and family-oriented, and they want to accumulate as much wealth and power as possible for themselves and, when they age or die out, want their families to retain it. That's why great dynasties like the Plantagenets in England or the Habsburgs in Austria or the Romanovs in Russia held power for centuries and were only overthrown through violence and war.
It doesn't matter what high ideals we may claim to have, whether we've had revolutions to get rids of monarches and establish republican rule -- the hunger for power by people and their families remains and overwhelms.
