MLK in Washington Square Park

Meet Adam Wren, the Idiot from Indiana

Ever told a bad joke?

I've told many -- some might even call this blog a bad joke, just thought I'd get that obvious one out of the way -- and there are many reasons why a joke "fails to land."

Maybe the idea behind the joke was funny but the execution was bad.

Maybe the idea behind the joke was flawed and it falls apart when told. 

Maybe the joke wasn't just as funny to the person hearing it as it was to the person telling it.

Or maybe ... maybe ... just maybe the joke betrays something bad about the person telling it. Maybe the jokes reveals something ugly that makes the joke not only unfunny but also disturbing.

Such is the case of Adam Wren, a supposed "humor" writer from Indiana who allegedly came to NYC for a few days to visit the "bubble" of "Clinton Country."

Oh yes, Mr. Wren the Hoosier thinks he's just the funniest guy there is. Oh, he's a hoot. So funny. So witty. So wry. And if you don't think he's funny, if you don't get the joke, then you're just a crabby liberal elitist who doesn't understand the oh-so-virtuous world of "middle America."

Mr. Wren recently posted a long, long, long, long, long, long (and I do mean long) supposedly "humorous" piece on Politico where he visited trendy parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan to try to "understand" the people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and are horrified (how dare they!) by the Donald J. Trump Presidency. "Aren't these people ridiculous?" Mr Wren is saying. "Aren't they arrogant and dumb?" He makes fun of their habits like eating organic food and doing yoga, he makes them out to be precious little cry babies, and he's just so mean but, oh, just so funny, that everyone should love his "skewering" of blue America -- even idiot liberals!

This piece was clearly meant to be a "humorous" answer to all the journalism in the last year where reporters from Blue America traveled into the heart of Red America to try to "understand" Trump Voters. I get that Mr. Wren the Red American Trump voter found these pieces annoying and condescending -- I frankly found them boring myself, only because they were trying to make me feel sympathy for people who don't deserve it and all those pieces did was confirm that for me -- so attempting a humorous "answer" might have some merit to it. But his piece is hateful and not funny and, more importantly, it revealed something about Mr. Wren -- that he's an arrogant racist idiot.

Why?

Because if you want to visit the real "Clinton Country" go to the South Bronx. Go to the poorest areas of NYC where vastly more people voted for Clinton over Trump than in other, better heeled parts of the city. But Wren didn't do that, not only because it would ruin the central premise of his piece, but also because "those people" i.e. black, Hispanics, basically anyone non-white, doesn't exist for people like him. They're non-people to people like Mr. Wren. 

I'm not going to post Mr. Wren's garbage (you can seek it out if you'd like) but I will highlight some selections that Ben Adler, a very fine writer from City and State wrote in response to Mr. Wren's piece that was "lazy bias masquerading as anti-elitism."

In New York City, the borough that went for Clinton by the largest margin isn’t Manhattan or Brooklyn; it’s the Bronx, where Clinton won 88 percent, versus 86 percent in Manhattan and 79 percent in Brooklyn. This is not because living farther uptown inherently makes you more Democratic; it’s because the Bronx is the poorest and least-white borough. But Wren didn’t go to the Bronx.

n fact, only the white working class went for Trump, while the non-white working class went overwhelmingly for Clinton – hence, Clinton’s victory among lower-income voters. Wren and his editors chose to reinforce faulty stereotypes merely because they already exist. It’s a feedback loop of malicious ignorance.

Trump won voters making between $50,000 and $200,000 per year, while losing those making less than $50,000. The portrayal of Trump voters as mostly blue-collar folks suffering from “economic anxiety” is inaccurate. The antidote to such flawed journalism is careful, nuanced reporting, not incurious, prejudiced claptrap.

I'm quite sure Mr. Wren enjoys the "outraged" responses to his piece like those of Mr. Haber and me. When you're a bad person like he is (or the President he admires) you enjoy upsetting people.  You enjoy making hurting people who are unlike you. And that's who Republicans and Trump voters and Red Americans like Wren are -- bad people, people who enjoy inflicting pain on "the other." Good people don't inflicting pain. 

It's that simple. Really.

But we're all capable, I guess, of telling bad jokes.  

Spring Snow Showers NYC

Tangled Webs

I find the people in these stories so repulsive -- yet, oddly fascinating -- that I can't help but share them.

One is about a group of NYC socialites/friends from 2005 who now, more than a decade later, have been hopelessly torn apart by the presidency of ... you know who. One is a now a "Real Housewife" and claims to be a-political. One is fiercely political and a strong member of the Resistance. And another if you know who's daughter. Truly a weird tale.

The other is about Republican Staten Island Congressman Dan Donovan, supposedly the "good guy" who succeeded two other scandal-tainted Republicans. Turns out, he's got a scandal all his own. If he was a Democrat I'm sure the New York Post would call him "Dan the Crooked Congress-Man." 

Enjoy. Well, not really. 

Steven Bochco RIP

Growing up, I'll admit, I probably watched too much TV -- but that's because TV had some good stuff on it. And, in retrospect, it was changing. 

As a kid, I enjoyed watching all those 80s and 90's shows that appealed to adolescent minds -- The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Cheers, Seinfeld, etc -- but there were also other shows, usually dramas, that were darker and morally complex, which featured flawed characters who sometimes made bad decisions, very often because they were living under immense personal and professional pressure. 

Very often those shows had been created or co-created by a man named Steven Bochco.  He died yesterday at the age of 74.

His big hits in the closing decades of the 20th century were Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Doogie Howser MD, and NYPD Blue. These were brilliantly written, very moving, and often very funny shows that showed the complexity of people living their lives in intense professional environments. In many ways, those shows gave me insights into what it would be like to be a grown up, what the worlds of love and friendship and work might be like, how things could erupt at any moment that might upend people's lives -- and how we weren't always guaranteed happy endings. The plots of episodes would build on each other in the manner of soap operas (but without the cheesiness) and sometimes characters, characters who we had come to love and adore, would -- GASP! -- die. Like, you know, in real life.  

Today we live in "The Golden Age of Television" (TV is the only things in our society that seems to be getting better instead of worse) but it wouldn't have been possible if Bochco hadn't paved the way more than thirty years earlier. To this, we owe him a huge debt.

And Steven Bochco was a NYC boy, a graduate of the High School of Performing Arts. RIP.

P.S. I remember an episode of LA Law that I saw when I was a kid, where the sleazy lawyer Arnie is trying to convince his hapless secretary Roxanne to help him defect to another law firm. She's torn, excited by the opportunity but saying that she doesn't want to leave the old firm because it's her "home" and the people who work there are her "family." Arnie then reminds Roxanne of a couple of times (from previous seasons) when she almost got fired and was also denied a raise. He tells her that, despite her feelings, this firm isn't really her home and the people there aren't really her family. 

That, right there, was what made that show and others by Bochco so great: a mostly unsympathetic character like Arnie offering an underling some very good, brutally honest advice, based on events that had happened earlier in the season. It also taught me, a kid who had never had a job at that point, what the working world was really like. I never forgot that lesson and have remembered well into my long working life. 

Thanks again, Mr Bochco.

Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Doogie Howser MD, and NYPD Blue also had the best opening credits and themes of any TV shows at the time. I can't find one of them but here are the other two:

The Dodgers Connection

Airplane hijackings have an ominous place in American history -- particularly in NYC.

And, if you think about it, hijacking planes is a very recent phenomenon in the annals of crime. For millennia there has been murdering, thievery, pirating, rape, etc., etc. -- but forceably commandeering aircraft in the sky is only as old as the airplane itself. (Hijacking is something the Wright brothers probably didn't consider when they were inventing air flight, just like the creators of the Internet and social media didn't think those inventions would be used to subvert democracy). 

So when was the first airplane hijacking in American history -- and who did it?

Believe it or not, the first such recorded crime was committed by a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers named Len Koeneck. On September 16, 1935, the baseball player had just been released by the team when they were playing in Chicago. Len got on a plane to Detroit where he got good and drunk and attacked the crew. They chained him down and dumped him in Detroit.

Since hijacking had yet to become a feared crime, no one thought it odd that he should then be allowed to get on another flight, this time to Toronto en route to Buffalo (where Len hoped to get back into minor league ball). Again, he got wasted, and this time attacked the pilots and lunged for the controls (apparently hoping to divert the flight directly to Buffalo). A brawl ensued. Len was a big man, hard to fight, and the pilots were frightened that the out of control former Dodger would cause the plane to crash. So one of the pilots slammed him in the head with a fire extinguisher and, due to blunt force trauma, he died. The pilots landed in Toronto and were never charged with a crime.

It's a wild tale: the first hijacking in American history was committed by a professional baseball player -- and was thwarted. And had an NYC connection. 

Crazy. 

Thankfully Bobby Thomson was still to come almost sixteen years later. 

The Last Imus Show

Today was Don Imus's final show.

After almost 50 years on NYC radio he turned off the mike for good. 

You can listen to the very last few minutes of his career here. 

Call Me Al (You Need Help)

When I was a kid, Al D'Amato was political giant in New York. A Republican U.S. Senator, he was known as "Senator Pothole" -- the man who "brought home the bacon", "filled the potholes", and was a tireless advocate for his state. Yes, he was conservative and voted that way in the senate, but he was less of an ideologue and more of an old-fashioned retail politician who's main concern was the state he represented and not his party. You don't see a lot of politicians like that any more, especially Republicans. 

Oh, how times have changed.

In 1998, D'Amato lost his senate seat to Chuck Schumer (who's now the Senate Minority Leader and might be, let's hope, the Majority Leader some day). But that wasn't a problem for Al -- he moved to NYC, become a high-priced lobbyist, and appeared to be living La Dolce Alphonse. Who needs a boring old senate seat when you got cash, bling, booze, broads, parties, and influence? 

I'll take that over being a senator any day. He had a great second act.

Sadly, like so much these days, Al D'Amato has gone wrong. He's no longer Senator Al or living La Dolce Alphonse. Instead, he's an old man going through a nasty divorce and he's better known these days for being kicked off airplanes and being caught yelling at this estranged wife. Apparently, he did just that while she was recovering in a hospital bed.

Poor man. He's clearly troubled. I hope he gets some help and puts this sad chapter behind him.

Classic Mr NYC

Years before he became the darling of Broadway and the culture at large, Alexander Hamilton was still best known as the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. 

And, like so many a public figure since, he had a ... STORMY personal life (pun entirely intended). And he had a temper too.

It got him killed. Insult flew between Hamilton and Vice-President Aaron Burr, leading to their infamous duel over in New Jersey. After "the damn fool" Burr shot him, Hamilton was ferried to Manhattan where he finally died. He was only 47-years old. 

Le sigh. 

Exactly where in Manhattan the great man expired is up too much debate. As I noted in this 2009 post, there's a plaque in Greenwich Village claiming to be the place where he died. Only it's wrong. Hamilton didn't die there! The building or house where he did is long, long gone so no one really know. It's a bit of incorrect history on display in NYC and it was noted here long ago. 

Classic!

Paul McCartney @ March for Our Lives NYC - March 24, 2018