Newsflash: Politician Says Something Really Stupid

We’ll be the first to confess that there are times when Michael Bloomberg comes across as an admirable voice of sanity in an otherwise insane world. The New York Mayor’s courageous stand on gun control would be one example. And even his much ridiculed legislative jihad against monstrous, sugar laden soft-drinks surely has a laudable concern for public health at its heart. But there are times when the man takes positions that can only be described as stupid.

This is one of those times. In an interview published today in New York Magazine Michael Bloomberg accuses Bill de Blasio, the current Democratic frontrunner in the race to succeed him, of running a racist political campaign for prominently featuring his mixed-race family in campaign commercials:

I mean he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote. You tailor messages to your audiences and address issues you think your audience cares about. 

It’s truly mind boggling that the man who is most responsible for, and is the most prominent defender of, New York’s controversial stop and frisk policing methods, and who later in that same interview insists that the best way to reduce crime in the city is to get guns out of the hands of “minority males” could accuse another politician of racism for running campaign ads that prominently feature his mixed-race family. But then, I guess in a nation that accepts the notion that anti-gay propaganda equates to promoting “family values” while relentlessly slashing taxes in the hopes of driving the nation into bankruptcy and then dismantling our meager welfare state constitutes “fiscal/deficit hawkishness…” well, why not… Hell, let’s take it one step further and note that our president is perhaps the most racist individual alive today for having the temerity to run for office without once hiding the fact that he is black and the child of a interracial marriage.

(Update: New York Magazine is now offering the following text and tagging it as a “correction:”

Well, no, no, I mean he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote. You tailor messages to your audiences and address issues you think your audience cares about.

The previous statement, in which Bloomberg describes de Blasio’s campaign as one characterized by “Class-warfare and racist” remains unchanged.)

(Via: The New York Times)