New York City, I’m thinking about running for mayor. This is the greatest city in the world but I think I can make it a little better. I’m only eyeing a run right now but I have hired a campaign manager, a talented fellow named Ari Melber. We’ve been brainstorming about my campaign, mulling over promises like finally completing the rebuild of ground zero and ending stop and frisk and paving every potholed road in every borough.
I’ll tweak an idea from Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin’s 1969 mayoral campaign and make every last Sunday of each month in Manhattan a car free zone during daylight hours and rent bicycles to anyone who wants one thus giving the city a chance to breathe and refresh and cleanse its soul as it moves slower for a moment, hopefully increasing the sense of community. See, my campaign will be all about bringing more joy to the city. This should be a more vibrant place where cabaret licenses are automatic for every establishment so people can dance all over the place and public art is everywhere and marijuana is decriminalized and small soda cups are banned because this is New York. Go big or go home.
I was inspired to consider this decidedly madcap mayoral campaign by my deep love for this great city and the overwhelming sense of confidence I got from watching the nascent bid of former Congressman Anthony Weiner. If he can be in mayoral consideration then surely I can. Weiner’s last name now is “who resigned in disgrace after sending pictures to women while his wife was pregnant.” I can promise New York I’ll never turn my life into chat roulette. And I’ll be running because I believe I can improve New York, not because I want the city to act as my pastor and give me forgiveness. Or better yet act as my ex-girlfriend I’m trying to win back to prove I’m still lovable.
The main thing I learned in the New York Times Magazine cover story about Weiner is that he seems to be looking at this run as a chance for absolution. He seems like the sort of politician who needs love rather than one who craves power and this run seems to be about finding out if we still love him, as if we ever did. One of the many articles about the Times Magazine article quotes an unnamed New York Democratic political insider who says, “I’ve heard of lots of kinds of therapy, but never electoral therapy. As a voter, I’ve never thought it was my job to help a candidate fill that empty space inside.” Weiner’s lovely wife is standing beside him through this beginning of this second act. She’s on the cover of the Times Magazine, holding his hand. She’s his biggest supporter and he says that after he confessed to lying to her, her first reaction was: you have to stop lying to everyone else. And that she didn’t want him to quit. He cries when discussing how much he hurt her and how innocent she is and makes it seem like attacking him for what he did is also attacking her. OK, the man has spent $100,000 on polling to learn victory is unlikely though New Yorkers may be willing to forgive him. He should’ve saved his money and polled his brother who says in the article, “There was a douchiness about him that I don’t really see anymore.” We still see it, Anthony. We still see it.
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