OK, Really, Fuck You

Maybe I’m cranky having seen Bloomberg’s “New York Minute” ad — you know, the one where the narrator says how running New York is “the second toughest job in America” — right after the actual president was on David Letterman, but I think there are a lot harder jobs out there than installing lawn furniture on Broadway.

First, the phrase “second toughest job” has pretty clearly always been used in either a self-deprecating way of referring to serving as the mayor of an “ungovernable” place or as an “Aw Shucks” euphemism for the mayor of New York in AP reports reprinted in far-flung places. But I don’t think any of these people actually thought being mayor of New York was that tough — or at least has been since the bad old days of Abe Beame.

For the record, here are some people in the public sector that I think have a marginally more difficult job in 2009: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is somehow managing California’s $25 billion debt (see here for relative sizes of economies); Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, who is managing a military undertaking two difficult wars; how about General Stanley McChrystal? — while Obama said little on Letterman about New York’s traffic congestion, he did have a lot to say about Afghanistan; Tim Geithner’s job seems like it has been pretty tough; even Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s job seems tougher than Bloomberg’s; and while we’re talking about mayors, I think both Adrian Fenty (D.C.) and Cory Booker (Newark) have it a little tougher.

And because the campaign ad either skipped or overlooked that portion of the phrase that usually indicates “elected officials,” that means we can meditate on which people in the private sector also have “tough” jobs. That friendly man on the GM ad seems like a good place to start! Any of these jobs seem about fifty times as complicated as walking in a parade or banning smoking. We could go on . . .

All of which is kind of a symbol of the Bloomberg Era of New York: If Jimmy Walker or, I don’t know, Mad Men has taught me anything, New York was once kind of a swinging sort of wink-wink place that didn’t take itself all that seriously. Bloomberg (and not 9/11) has made New York insufferably earnest — from nanny statist initiatives to this absurd notion that anyone west of Morristown or north of Milford gives a shit about what the mayor of New York thinks. Bloomberg’s campaign using the phrase “the second toughest job in America” sincerely is the quintessence of Bloomberg’s megalomania, not to mention a perfect snapshot of his humorlessness. To make matters worse, running that ad right after Obama was doing something historic on television (e.g., spending an hour on a talk show) showed a complete lack of self-awareness. Do you really want four more years of that?