The "quiet dignity" of 4 World Trade Center.

Not to be confused with 1 World Trade Center — the 1776-foot-tall "Freedom Tower" — 4 World Trade Center is designed to reflect the reflecting pools that occupy the place where the original Twin Towers stood. The video is worth waiting out a the commercial. I especially enjoyed the views of the interior and the modest, gentle expressiveness of the architect Gary Kamemoto. Listen for what he says about craftsmen.

"As architects, if we push and try to do something extraordinary and give the workers that opportunity, we see that everybody is wanting to prove their trade."

In the NYC stop-and-frisk case, the 2d Circuit said the district judge Shira Scheindlin created an "appearance of partiality."

It stayed her order and removed her from the case.

The appellate court's 2-page ruling cited this NYT article in a footnote to criticize Scheindlin for the way the related-case rule has directed stop-and-frisk cases against the police to her ever since 1999, when she was randomly assigned the case dealing with the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. The NYT had this (last May):

In a city with dozens of Federal District Court judges, it is striking that a single judge has so many opportunities to rule on one of the Police Department’s signature crime-fighting tactics — a development that has frustrated city officials....

The language of the court rule leaves it to the discretion of individual judges to accept the case as related or not. It instructs judges to consider whether placing the cases in the same courtroom would result in conserving judicial resources, allow more efficient litigation or serve the convenience of the various parties.

The rule calls for related cases to have a “similarity of facts and legal issues” or to stem from the “same transactions or events.” But cases are not related merely because they involve identical legal issues or litigants....

"This is not what bankruptcy is about.... What’s next? Are they going to start going after food stamps?"

Argues a lawyer for a woman who filed for bankruptcy with $23,000 in debt, whose landlord — not among the creditors — stepped forward with an offer to buy out her rent-stabilized lease for an amount equal to her debt. It's worth it to the landlord because, under NYC's rent stabilization law she pays only $703 a month for a place that would go for thousands in the current market. She's 79 and has lived there for 50 years.

The legal question, pending before the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals is whether the lease is an asset like a car that can be part of the bankruptcy estate or whether it's like a welfare benefit (which would be exempt).

The widow’s lawyers argue that a rent-stabilized lease is a public assistance benefit, just like Social Security or disability payments, and should be exempt from the bankruptcy estate. Treating it like an asset, the lawyers said in court documents, undermines the intent of rent-stabilization laws in New York designed to protect tenants deemed in need of assistance with housing....

“It’s an unfair money-grab,” said David B. Shaev, the New York state chairman of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys. “To remove this foundation, this safety net, it’s unconscionable.”

You have to read pretty far into the linked NYT article to see that the landlord in this case is not trying to throw the woman out. His offer allows her to stay for the rest of her life. He does, however, want to block her 50-year-old son (who lives with her) from having "succession rights" to the place. Nevertheless, the article ends with a quote from the old woman:

“I’m afraid to find a white paper on my door,” she said with her head down, tearing up as she tugged at the edges of her plastic-covered chair.

Any tears for the young people who are trying to live in NYC, looking for apartments and stuck entering a housing market skewed by the 2.2 million people in rent-stabilized places? No, because Mary Veronica Santiago is a specific person, crying here for you, and you're not supposed to notice that her real concern is for a middle-aged man who'd like to live out his years in one of the cheap apartments that make other apartments so insanely expensive in NYC. And no one cries for the creditors, owed $23,000. They're just credit card companies.

It’s an unfair money-grab... it’s unconscionable....

Why is a benefit that comes at the expense of a private landlord equated with "a public assistance benefit, just like Social Security or disability payments"? I know welfare benefits are paid for out of money that comes, via taxation, from private citizens, but that is pooled money, collected according to whatever tax policies the legislatures have seen fit to adopt. Government may create valuable rights for tenants under rent-stabilization, but the value is extracted from one individual or entity — a particular landlord. Isn't it strange to call the landlord's loss of income a public assistance benefit?

ADDED: Reason's Matt Welch is also talking about this: Like me, he highlights the son's interest. ("That's right — in New York City, you can put your rent-stabilized apartment in your will, and hand it off to the next generation of $703-a-month payers.")

"Now that leading mayoral candidates Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota have both vowed to add two Muslim holidays to the public school calendar..."

"... advocates for other religious and ethnic groups are clamoring for their days to be recognized too."

“I think the city has to recognize (Chinese New Year),” said [Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver, a Democrat whose district includes Chinatown in lower Manhattan. “We don’t want to take away from the learning days, but we have to adjust the calendar appropriately to include all of the major populations that we have.”

All the major populations... what about the minor populations?

[City Councilman Daniel Dromm] introduced a resolution in July to close school on the holy day of Diwali, a festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains.

A spokesman for Lhota said he’d consider adding other holidays. De Blasio has said he supports adding the Chinese New Year, but his campaign wouldn’t comment on Diwali.

Where will it all end?

Imagine putting education first.

Bill de Blasio — with a 50 point lead in the polls — addresses that motorcycle mob attack.

I'd said that the attack would hurt the campaign of the Democrats' left-wing candidate for NYC mayor, so I'm interested in how the seemingly soft-on-crime de Blasio addresses the incident.

He said:

“We I believe are seeing a phenomenon with some of these motorcycle groups deciding to take over certain streets so they can perform their stunts, and disrupt traffic, slow traffic in the process, and it’s dangerous. It’s really dangerous... This confrontation is a byproduct of that, so we have to crack down on this. It’s not legal to disrupt traffic in a group, it’s not legal, obviously to take the law into their own hands as they appear to have done... This is simply not acceptable behavior."

But what are you going to do about it? It's easy to say "This is simply not acceptable behavior" about all manner of crimes, but then what. "Crack down." How?

"New York City Used To Be A Terrifying Place."

A photo essay, from last August about NYC in they pre-Giuliani years, which I ran across this afternoon as I was thinking about the electoral prospects of the left-Democrat mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio in the aftermath of Alexian Lien's motorpsycho nightmare.

Scroll down at the first link to find: "Bernhard Goetz, who shot four youths in a subway train in 1984, became a symbol for the paranoia New Yorkers felt about getting robbed or attacked."

Lien got me thinking about Goetz. Similarities and differences. Goetz had a gun and overreacted out of fear; Lien had a car and underreacted (at first). Arguably. Those are the differences.

The similarity is: A man embodies the plight of an ordinary citizen in a city gone wild. And mayors are held accountable.

"One Video Encapsulates Everything Wrong With NYC Street Culture."

"Two banes of New York City streets — aggressive dirt bikers using the road as a personal racetrack, and SUV drivers using their vehicles as weapons — collide in this horrific video making the rounds today."

Yesterday at about 1:30 p.m., Alexian Lien, 33, was driving a Range Rover north on the West Side Highway near 125th Street with his wife and 5-month old daughter as passengers, according to reports in the Post and Daily News. About 20 seconds into the video, group of motorcycle and dirt bike riders surround the SUV in the center lane, and a motorbike rider appears to hit the brakes and get into a fender-bender with Lien’s vehicle.

You've seen the video. (Or if not, check it out.) We watched it here at Meadhouse this morning — my son Chris along with Meade and me — and we had some different interpretations of what we saw. I'm linking to StreetsBlog, above, but there are obviously more mainstream articles (like this in the NYT). My choice of link is based on my desire to get some perspective on what these bikers are doing. (I thought they had an intent to rob the guy in the expensive car, and they deliberately cut him off, and Meade saw it as bikers out for a big group ride who felt righteous and lost their minds to road rage after what was an accident.)

There are 77 comments at StreetsBlog, which seems to be a bicycle-oriented site where people are concerned about sharing the road. I'll cherry-pick some comments. Each paragraph break is a new commenter:

I don't know what happened before the video, but based only on what I see here, the driver is acting in self defense. He is surrounded, and the initial crash was obviously deliberately caused by the guy on the motorcycle. Additionally, the guys family is in the car. At that point, its either himself and his family or them, and the only weapon he has is that car. Also, as a side note: This has nothing to do with "street culture." Its an absolutely extreme situation that's way past the point where traffic laws or driving behavior are the issue.

This has everything to do with NYC's street culture. It's a culture that's enabled by the NYPD, which focuses on tinted windows and nuisance tickets against cyclists, but sees hundreds of motorcycles on the HH parkway as the equivalent of a storm cloud - something that could be dangerous but that hopefully will pass. EVents like this are extreme, but they are the inevitable outcome of NYC's "anything goes" attitude toward street safety.

It's more like the outcome of the "if you chase them and any body gets hit in the process all fingers will be pointed at you" mentality. Most of these guys are simply going to run from the cops, and any attempt to chase them will involve risk to all the parties involved as well as innocent bystanders. It's a lose/lose situation for the NYPD.

There is plenty wrong with NYC street culture, but this video does not "encapsulate" it. There is nothing typical about this scene. The motorcyclists represent thug culture more than street culture, and this guy just happened to get caught in the middle of it and was probably scared shitless, and rightfully so. I saw an incarnation of this group riding through Brooklyn yesterday, and you wouldn't want to get into a situation with any two of these riders let alone two hundred.

First, there seems to be at least 50 motorcyclists in some of these shots. So, I ask, have they gotten a parade permit that is required of cyclists and pedestrians? Secondly. I saw a comment in another string on a website that reports that the NYPD has a do not engage policy when it comes to these throngs of motorcyclists. Not sure what that is supposed to mean, but if it is true, then why is there such a double standard when it comes to bikes? Finally, while riding I have been surrounded by around a dozen or so of these hot shots from time to time. It can be pretty scary when they are doing wheelies near you and gunning their bikes.

This video encapsulates everything wrong with NYPD's traffic enforcement culture. I've been there more than once as these illegal parades of thugs on unregistered and unlicensed dirt bikes swarm the streets, both on foot and in a car, and it is scary as hell either way. Other commenters are right. Given NYPD's lack of enforcement, best thing to do is to come to a complete stop and let them pass. Even so, many of them intentionally come dangerously close to cars, bicycles, and pedestrians in their path, running red lights and failing to yield all along the way.

I was on the Hudson River Greenway when these guys passed Canal Street. There had to be at least 200 of them. I've never seen so many motorbikes (and Quads too?) in my life. I was on the phone with my fiance and I was like wow . . . that's got to be so intimidating to be on the road with those guys. And then I sit back and laugh and think about the police presence we have at Critical Mass rides.

It certainly looked like they crowded him out of his lane and the the brake-checking started when he beeped. If theres anything before the video, obviously this interpretation would change.

Fool (driver) should have slowed down. Not saying the bikers were right, but come on, how dumb can you be. Situation could have been avoided.

Why was this driver targeted? These bikers don't target random people. The most important part is missing. The vehicle was surrounded in the very beginning of the video. Something must have occurred prior.

HE WAS A WEALTHY ASIAN MAN... 1%er! Hopefully Asians realize that no matter how much money they have and how insulated they believe themselves due to their wealth, they can be pulled from their cars and nearly murdered while the NYPD issues parking tickets. Just a taste of the de Blasio first term!

There's a lot to talk about here, but one thing is damage to the mayoral candidacy of the left-wing Democrat Bill de Blasio.

"18 Fun and Utterly Fascinating Facts About Joe Lhota."

He's the GOP candidate for mayor in NYC. I'll highlight one, the most legal one:

6) Remember the Giuliani administration's showdown with the Brooklyn Museum over a portrait of the Virgin Mary that involved elephant dung? A lot of that was Joe Lhota! As deputy mayor, he spearheaded negotiations with the museum, threatening it with eviction and funding cuts. He admitted recently that his legal argument was flawed, saying, "I have a much clearer understanding of the First Amendment now."

 And now I'm following Lhota on Twitter. Sample tweet:

Exhibit 5673 that @deBlasioNYC won't talk about the issues http://t.co/tW1sJTweJU #blahblahblahdeblasio

— Joe Lhota for Mayor (@JoeLhota4Mayor) September 23, 2013

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/All hail to our old gold and black!"

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/Our friendship may she never lack/Ever grateful, ever true...."

On a beautiful fall Saturday morning, here in Madison, Wisconsin, the UW marching band can be heard practicing, which includes practicing the opposing team's fight song, and Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette — provides the lyrics, about gold and black and friendship and gratefulness.

I ask Meade if it's okay for me to blog that and he says, "I think you've already done it," which makes me think I'm being accused of posting first and asking permission later, but he really means I've already blogged — in some past year — about his singing along with the UW marching band playing the Purdue song. I go looking into the archives, and find, first, a post from April 2008, which can't be right, because I didn't meet Meade until January 2009, and the post in question shows New York City, where I was living at the time. The post, called "Morning fog update," shows what was my view of Manhattan. Meade arrives in the comments:

Simon said: "How much are you going to miss this view when your year's up?"

Meade said: "Yes, and how much we will miss these morning fog... updates!"

Ann Althouse said: "Great trees in NYC right now, and I'm about to get a new lens, so look out. Also remember that dead rat on the sidewalk in NY?"

There's a gap in the conversation where a commenter expunged her own comments, but apparently she said something that referred (possibly disparagingly) to things that could be photographed in Madison. And Meade says:

Yes! A marching band playing "Hail Purdue!"

And a dead rodent.

With fantasy fog...

...Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise...

I find the old dead rat post — "Things that exploded in Brooklyn Heights recently" — where there's a discussion of how to buy a light bulb in NYC and a couple of commenters who never comment here anymore are advising me about shops in town, and there's Meade:

I hate to risk spoiling a New York hardware store bonding moment for you good folks but back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where women (and a few unnecessary men) go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you might not have! A Google!

I resist my future husband:

Thanks, Meade, but I actually have this other really odd halogen bulb to replace. I don't want to mail order it. I want to show it to some hardware store guy who will give me the right bulb.

Meanwhile, Meade responds to a commenter who said "Yes but do you have swarthy olive skinned counterm[e]n to flirt with attractive visiting professors. Telling her how she would light up when the proper bulb is inserted in her socket. So to speak." With the metaphor in play now, Meade writes:

"Yes but do you have..."

Even better. We have links. Lots of links. Links pointing to pages and pages of swarthy olive-skinned counter[people], if that's what you're into.

Disease-free links. Unambiguously gendered links.

("Unambiguously gendered links" refere to another commenter's wisecrack that some NY hardware store employee is "AC/DC.")

Organic free-range links. Links that would never even THINK of stalking fair-haired Professoras and trying to put their bulbs into sockets in which they don't belong. And links that, frankly, just don't have the nerve to ask, "'ey, YOU! Are you clickin' on me?"

Shy unassuming links just busy doing their jobs and quiet[l]y living their linky lives.

The other commenter says: "Yeah, but [can] you get a link drunk and walk her home and talk your way into her main frame?" And Meade says:

No, but if you give a link a nice slow neck rub, draw the link a sudsy warm bath, and serve up some browned baby-back ribs with a glass of Merlot, she just might let you take a look at what's on her laptop.

So to speak.

And here's a post from August 2009, the month we got married, noticing Meade's comments in a July 2008 thread:

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels....

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes....

Fry up some bacon... provide the vocal track when the UW marching band plays the Purdue fight song....

ADDED: Meade reads this post and admires his selection — back in April 2008 — of the Purdue song lyric "Where the Wabash spreads its valley/Filled with joy our voices raise." Subtly erotic, he observes now. Less than a year later, I would meet him in that Wabash valley....

"[K]ids who came to their maturity during the 'Age of Fail,' whose formative experience of American exceptionalism is that America is exceptionally crappy, are pissed..."

"... and are willing to work hard for politicians who are willing to do something about it." If we assume that — as The Nation's Rick Perlstein does in "Is Peter Beinart Right About a ‘New New Left’?" — then...

... another scenario looks like this: young citizens motivated by left-leaning passions run into a brick wall again and again and again trying to turn their convictions into power. The defining story of our next political era becomes not a New New Left but a corrosive disillusionment that drives the country into ever deeper sloughs of apathy.

What if, in other words, the harbinger election didn’t take place in New York...

Beinart had been talking about Bill de Blasio...

... but in Colorado—where a hyper-ideological, insurrectionist, corporate-money-soaked minority... recalled two progressive legislatures for daring to favor background checks for gun purchases even though Coloradans want background checks by a margin of 68 to 27 percent.

Beinart wants to think big. So let’s think big. Given a precedent like that, the result of our current trends might not be more socialism, but once more a stark showdown between socialism and barbarism. Apathy and social misery might make fertile ground for some charismatic demagogue, preaching scapegoating and a narrative of violent redemption…

You say you want a revolution... but what if the revolutionaries are on the other side?

Bloomberg says mayoral candidate de Blasio's campaign is not just "class warfare," it's "racist."

This comes in a New York Magazine interview. The interviewer immediately asks the simple question "Racist?" and Bloomberg says:

Well, no, no, I mean*...

The asterisk goes to a footnote that says they've inserted these words which they can't hear on their audiotape because the mayor's office asked them to.

... he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. 

De Blasio has a black wife and mixed-race offspring, and he uses his family in photo ops and ads.

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.

That doesn't make the campaign "racist"! He could have said "racial" or "race conscious."

But his whole campaign is that there are two different cities here. And I’ve never liked that kind of division. The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people. They are the ones that pay the bills. The people that would get very badly hurt here if you drive out the very wealthy are the people he professes to try to help. Tearing people apart with this “two cities” thing doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s a destructive strategy for those you want to help the most. He’s a very populist, very left-wing guy, but this city is not two groups, and if to some extent it is, it’s one group paying for services for the other.

It’s a shame, because I’ve always thought he was a very smart guy.

And it's a shame that Bloomberg said "racist" and dragged in the man's wife and kids, because he's got an important message here — warning New Yorkers away from excessive leftism. What a gift to de Blasio!

At an appearance in Brooklyn on Saturday with his wife and their 18-year-old daughter, Chiara, Mr. de Blasio called Mr. Bloomberg’s remarks “very, very unfortunate and inappropriate.”

“I’m exceedingly proud of my family,” he added. “I hope the mayor will reconsider what he said. I hope he realizes it was inappropriate.”

In her response to the mayor’s comments about her husband’s campaign, Ms. McCray said, “Do I look like an inanimate object? Or a tool? I walk, I talk and make my own decisions.”

NYC builds a newsstand designed to be run by blind workers, then decides to scrap it because it's not theft resistant.

Now they're going to build an new one.

“As part of a major and vital rehabilitation of the Kings County Criminal Court, we are adding a new newsstand and investing to make it accessible,” said a spokesman for the city Department of Design and Construction. The Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator ordered the DDC to build the stand as part of a $38 million courthouse renovation. City courthouse newsstands are operated by blind workers through a program run by the state Commission for the Blind.

Blind people have traditionally run newsstands, but the safeguard against theft —  a problem at any newsstand — is the heightened sense of morality people feel about cheating the blind.

Said one court source, “Let’s face it. It’s in the lobby of a courtroom, so you might get a few criminals walking by who wouldn’t think twice about stealing from a blind guy.”

You might think NYC should just use the new place and not employ a blind worker, but consider that there is a pre-existing but run-down newsstand in the lobby, run by a 61-year-old blind man who's worked there for 10 years, the design of the new shelves really does facilitate shoplifting, and there are other aspects of the design that aren't suitable for a blind person. The area behind the counter is said to be too small to use a cane or seeing-eye dog.

It sounds almost as though the designer had a secret agenda of ousting the blind. That's a premise I'd explore if I were suing. Things less cheap than lawsuits: 1. building another new newsstand, and 2. eating the cost of shoplifting.

Quite aside from potential litigation, there's the political problem. Here you've got: 1. wasting the taxpayers' money, 2. looking stupid, 3. showing lack of concern for the blind, 4. the embarrassment of a ridiculous crime paradise in the lobby of a criminal courthouse, breeding more and more disrespect for the law among those with the least reason to feel respect.

"It would be obscene to pine for the urban agony that fomented [Norman] Mailer’s run [for Mayor of NYC]."

"But imagine if the present-day city, so bright and neatly quantified on the surface, so excluding and unequal just underneath, were to produce even one candidate with his brio and originality."

Writes Lee Siegel, in a NYT op-ed titled "When City Elections Were Fun."

I'm blogging this in part so I can show you (once again) one of my favorite old pictures:



That's the 4th time I've put that picture on the blog. (Previously: "The 51st State," "Norman Mailer died," and "Althouse in 1970.")

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH says: "Althouse looks like a member of the Manson Family in that 1970 photo." And I say "That’s exactly what I thought when I was putting the picture up!" Also, discussion of where I am, what color was may hair, and what was I holding in my hands 43 years ago. 

"'New York Times' to New York Democrats: Get Over That 'Hope and Idealism.'"

Headline at The Nation for John Nichols's column decrying the NYT endorsement of Christine Quinn in the mayoral race.

NYC mayor candidates asked at debate whether they support letting people drink beer on their stoops all say yes.

(Except that one guy who's a minister.) 

What else can they do? Well, there's this:

“I should be able to drink ’em in a park and at the beach, too,” Anthony Weiner added.

Bill de Blasio — with the help of Maureen Dowd and her untrustworthy tape recorder — hands Christine Quinn the gay card and she plays it...

... for all it's worth:

“I have a family. In my apartment, my wife and I, we’re a family,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “Our 10 nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews, we’re a family. My father and I, Kim’s dad. we’re a family. When I took care of my mother when she was dying, that’s a family. Kim and I lost our mothers. People make personal decision, for medical reasons, all kinds of reasons, that go into why people do and don’t have children. And no one should comment about that and make it a political issue.”

Here's the background, in case you haven't been keeping up. Quinn and de Blasio are running for Mayor of NYC. Quinn is a childless lesbian. De Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, said something to Maureen Dowd that Dowd transcribed as a statement that Quinn is "not the kind of person I feel I can go up to and talk to about issues like taking care of children at a young age and paid sick leave."

Quinn jumped on that, de Blasio said his wife was misquoted, and Dowd's column was corrected, and the NYT revealed McCray's full quote, which came in response to Dowd's question why Quinn "was not rallying women." McCray said:

"Well, I’m a woman, and she’s not speaking to the issues that I care about, and I think a lot of women feel the same way. I don’t see her speaking to the concerns of women who have to take care of children at a young age or send them to school and after school, paid sick days, issues in the workplace — she’s not speaking to any of those issues. What can I say? And she’s not accessible, she’s not the kind of person that I feel that I can go up and talk to and have a conversation with about those things, and I suspect that other women feel the same thing that I’m feeling."

So McCray's point was that Quinn isn't speaking the right way, not that her being lesbian makes her not the kind of person who can relate to women with children. Maybe McCray was cleverly creating an occasion for people to think that, but she didn't say it.

And now, wait. I'm just now seeing Dowd's next paragraph, and it shatters the mental image I'd had of McCray:

Last spring, McCray did an interview with Essence magazine about her feelings about being a black lesbian who fell in love with a white heterosexual, back in 1991, when she worked for the New York Commission on Human Rights and wore African clothing and a nose ring and he was an aide to then-Mayor David Dinkins. With her husband, she was also interviewed by the press in December and was asked if she was no longer a lesbian, and she answered ambiguously: “I am married. I have two children. Sexuality is a fluid thing, and it’s personal. I don’t even understand the question, quite frankly.”

Whoa! Why isn't this the part of Dowd's column that's getting more attention?

Dowd goes on to talk about how Quinn has been "unable to get traction, even with women, despite talking more freely about the historical nature of her bid to become the first woman and lesbian to be mayor." Good. People shouldn't vote just to rack up another first.

NYC had a gay mayor in Ed Koch — right? He won in 1977, when his sexuality was known well enough that there were posters reading "Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo." He said in a 1989 interview: "I happen to believe that there's nothing wrong with homosexuality. It's whatever God made you. It happens that I'm a heterosexual."

So it's great if people find Quinn boring despite her firstiness. Dowd — either craftily or bumbling — found a way to make her interesting, and Quinn is displaying some political skill, exploiting what is exploitable.

Anthony Weiner is pleased with the sheer numerosity of his ideas...

2 books! 125 ideas!

"Look, powerful voices have made it clear from the very beginning, they didn't want me to win. But this isn't about what they want...." This is about what I want.

"New York's narrowest house, which measures just 9.5 feet wide and 30 feet deep..."

"Located at 75 1/2 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, the three-story townhouse is legendary for both its size and its famous past inhabitants, which include Cary Grant, John Barrymore, Edna St Vincent Millay and Margaret Mead." Mead live there with her sister and her sister's wife, the cartoonist William Steig.

I love this place, which I've noticed in person many times. The linked article includes the floor plans and photos of most of the the interior spaces.

ADDED: I mean husband. What is happening to my mind in this world today!

"One of the reasons I love living in New York is that no one gives a shit about celebrities."

"Susan Sarandon comes to your deli, Lou Reed's in your kickboxing class, David Mamet flips you off, whatever, most New Yorkers really don't care."

A stray line from an article that's basically about "7 Reasons Child Stars Go Crazy (An Insider's Perspective)."

Personally, I don't care about celebrities, but somehow I care that Lou Reed is kickboxing.

Huma Abedin: "A Wife With Powerful Ties Is an Unexpected Architect of a New York Comeback."

That's a front-page article in the NYT, illustrated by a picture of Huma and Hillary that makes them look like a single 2-headed entity. The Times, citing unnamed sources, calls Abedin "a seasoned operative well versed in the politics of redemption" and "a main architect of her husband’s rehabilitative journey, shaping his calculated comeback," who is exploiting her status as a "surrogate daughter to Bill and Hillary Clinton."

This is very interesting to me, because when I watched this video, Weiner's first in his mayoral campaign....



... I thought Anthony Weiner did a great job, presenting himself in the context of New York City, seeming to really belong to the city and its people and to care about it and to be ready to serve. And then there's Huma. She appears in a speaking role at the very end, and there's just something off and unnatural about her. Weiner comes across as a regular guy — he's got the actor skills of a politician — but she — in her seeming fakeness — betrays the reality: This is a remorseless machine of a power couple. She's the woman behind the man, and I'm sure they think that bringing her on camera should boost him. She's beautiful — or so we've been told many times — and she stood by her man. If she accepts him after what he did, that should be enough. That should cancel out his sexual misdeeds. If we hold those misdeeds against him, we're punishing her, which would make the opposite of sense, given that the wife is the official victim when the husband sexually sins.

It's like Bill and Hillary all over again, except that — unlike Hillary — Huma doesn't have the actor skills of a politician. She's a behind the scenes person, and though she can look fabulous in stills, in the video, she can't convincingly embody the Warm, Loving Wife character that Americans generally expect to see with a political husband, and that Anthony Weiner in particular needs.

The NYT article reminds us that Abedin "faced scrutiny this month about an arrangement that allowed her to earn money as a private consultant while still working as a top adviser at the State Department." We're told Abedin "fully intends to continue her work with Mrs. Clinton’s transition team" and that  "several political aides have been tempted to sign onto a Weiner mayoral campaign" because they want a connection that might get them in on the Hillary '16 presidential campaign.

The article begins with a description of how Abedin seemingly hoodwinked Chelsea Clinton into appearing in Anthony Weiner's first post-disgrace photo op: "When Chelsea Clinton wanted to make a low-key visit to the hurricane-stricken Rockaways last fall, she arranged to take a trip with her close friend Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton." Huma proceeded to exploit Chelsea's little trip for the re-introduction of Weiner. Now, I'm completely skeptical about whether Chelsea really wanted her visit to be low-key and whether she was surprised or tricked in any way by Anthony's horning in on the Female Empathy Tour of the Stricken. And I'd like to know the real truth of the interactions between the 2 power couples, Bill-and-Hillary and Huma-and-Anthony. I assume the Clintons know everything that's really going on, even as they want to look disconnected. It will be interesting to see what we will be able to figure out about all this, and I think Huma's lack of skill on video camera will be quite helpful in this regard. Bring on the Huma!

By the way, the NYT says "The couple live in a spacious Park Avenue apartment owned by a Clinton donor." But look at the kitchen in the background at the beginning of the video. Come on. That's not their kitchen, is it? I call bullshit.

On everything.

AND:  Rereading that headline... there's that word... that word that is the classic bullshit tell of our time: unexpected.

ALSO: I constantly mistype "Human" for "Huma." I can't tell you how many times I did that in the process of writing this post. But the one that I missed — and left up for 2 hours — was the one in the post title.  To err is human. To err in the post title is... superhuman.