Bloomberg says he's going to target poverty

I reluctantly admire our mayor here, Michael Bloomberg, perhaps one of the most candid characters in public service right now. Far too often, I feel, Americans pay undue reverence to elected leaders, such as that creep in the White House, or alternately, pay no attention to them at all, so that politicians have free range to rampage, like that creep in the White House.

I met Bloomberg once, when he visited a relaunch party for a newspaper I worked for many thousands of years ago, where he impressed with a sharp sense of humor, and I also saw him speaking at a New York Times Times Talks event, where I was again impressed with his confidence and intelligence: he mentioned being 62 years old and in great health and at the top of his game, and at very least you felt that here was someone who really enjoyed heading for the office every morning to get stuff done — it betokened an honesty of purpose.

So now he says more will be done to tackle poverty in New York City. Blessed and privileged as I am, I have slight if any understanding of real poverty in New York, but I've walked around (stumbled?) parts of the city at all hours of the day and night, and occasionally I've glimpsed horror within yards of extreme wealth.

Last week on lonely Eleventh Avenue over by the Javits Conference Center, I saw a man lying on the sidewalk ahead of me. There is nothing over there on the extreme west side of Manhattan in the West 40s except enormous trucks parked while drivers snooze or screw local prostitutes. There's a huge rail yard (for the L.I.R.R.) and a heliport by the river itself. And also, this man, lying on the street. As I approached, he was sitting upright on one elbow, facing the glaring afternoon sun. As I passed, I glanced down, and saw that with his other hand he was picking furiously at a vast grey fungus-like mass that covered his forehead and most of his face.

Oh, I shuddered, and kept on walking. He was probably younger than he looked; probably quite a street survivor; and by every mainstream measurement of human beings in America today, totally fucked. During the last election campaign for mayor here in New York City, I was pissed off at what seemed to be the non-existence of a campaign, that all the local newspapers seemed to have decided in advance that Bloomberg should be re-elected without any real airing of issues or digging around to see if Mighty Mike was as shiny as he seems.

One person I argued with said that because Bloomberg is a billionaire, he is beyond corruption, therefore he had to be a good mayor. Yes, that's true — he doesn't have to work hard at bribery and corruption like other politicians, he could simply electronically wire you a brown envelope from his Blackberry. I tried to make the same person see the term 'billionaire' as not necessarily an innately good thing — or bad thing — but in this day and age it is like — bad analogy coming up — if humans were musical instruments, most of us would be tin whistles, whereas a billionaire is the Berlin Philharmonic.

Bloomberg's opponent during that election once raised the issue of there being two New Yorks, a rich, visible New York, and the poor, invisible one. The New York Daily News attacked him for being 'divisive.' As happened so often since 2000, I felt as if I was powerlessly watching people walking into traffic. So now, belatedly, I am heartened that Bloomie seems to be doing something new about poverty, but though I regret having to mention Him, Jesus did say: "Ye have the poor always with you." A simple statement, but one that today needs clarification: some born-again Christians in America recently went so far as to say that Jesus' words justifies telling the poor to fuck off and die — He was saying, there will always be poor people, no matter how hard anyone tries to help them, so why bother? I honestly don't think this is what He meant.