Bloomberg Refuses To Coddle The Disabled

Treats everyone equal . . . good to know:

To all the New Yorkers who have brought on the indignation of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, add one more: Michael A. Harris, a disability-rights advocate and journalist with a tape recorder that went off at the wrong time.

Mr. Harris, who uses a wheelchair, unwittingly found himself the source of a bizarre and uncomfortable 60 seconds with the mayor during a news conference on Thursday at Gov. David A. Paterson’s Midtown office.

As Mr. Bloomberg was delivering remarks on the governor’s introduction of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, someone bumped into a tape recorder that Mr. Harris was carrying in his pocket. That triggered the recorder’s play button, and noise from an earlier rally Mr. Harris had recorded at City Hall started playing.

The noise, which was not playing loudly enough for most other people in the room to notice, rattled Mr. Bloomberg.

“Can we just stop this, and maybe we’ll start again?” the mayor asked.

At that point the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, leaned over to the mayor, covered the microphone on the lectern and whispered in his ear, “He’s disabled.”

Mr. Harris’s disability, and the fact that he was clearly having difficulty reaching the recorder to shut it off, were apparently of little consequence to the mayor.

“I understand that — he can still turn it off,” Mr. Bloomberg was overheard saying. The mayor then suggested that Mr. Harris leave altogether. “Maybe we just take everything outside.”

. . .

A spokesman for the mayor explained that the Bloomberg administration frequently went out of its way to accommodate Mr. Harris at press events, providing him with transportation in a special van and ensuring wheelchair access is available. The spokesman, Jason Post, also pointed out that Mr. Bloomberg had treated Mr. Harris as he would any other reporter — which, Mr. Post added, should not be overlooked considering that the mayor was delivering remarks on equal rights for gay men and lesbians at the time Mr. Harris’s recorder went off.

“People should be treated the same,” Mr. Post said. “This is no different.”