Bermuda Was Settled By Privateers

Tom Robbins notes what you may have missed regarding Bloomberg’s tenure now that the media has moved away from producing investigative journalism including NYC-TV, Stuyvesant Town and Mayoral Control. And then there’s this:

Actually, the joke’s on us. Even as newspaper fortunes sank in recent years, Bloomberg diligently courted media barons like Zuckerman, Murdoch, and Sulzberger, who he understood could make his life difficult if they so chose. Minus their support, as Joyce Purnick’s new Bloomberg biography proves, he would have never risked his end run around term limits. But he knew he had little to fear. As Purnick’s book also tells us, even his weekend disappearing act to go to his mansion in Bermuda has gone unchallenged.

“He does his radio show Friday morning,” a former aide told her. “At 11:05, the latest, he’s in his car. At 11:30 he is at the airport. His plane is in the air at 11:40, he’s in Bermuda at 2:10. He’s on the golf course by 2:30. . . . Almost every weekend, spring and fall.”

There’s a photo op that’s been even more closely guarded than military caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base: Mayor Mike, golf bags over his shoulder, striding across the tarmac toward Air Bloomberg.

But of course all that golfing had a purpose — like puff pieces about the mayor’s golf score. And then there are the I [heart] NY golf balls. And of course the mayor’s own vision of immigration reform . . .