I am going on record as saying that my favorite NY newspaper is The Daily News. I read it I've never been too keen on Michael Goodwin. I am more of a EC Schipp kind of gal; although I also enjoy Michael Daly, Juan Gonzalez, Stanley Crouch, Errol Louis along with ... gasp! ... Gatecrasher. I mean, who doesn't love their gossip, right?

So Bob Fertik's email about boycotting New York City's newspaper of record came as a surprise. Here's what I got from Democrats.com :

I have been busy filling up our new blog: http://duffieldst.blogspot.com/. There are many developments in the effort to promote the Abolitionist heritage on Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn. City Council Representative John Liu lead a press conference at 227 Duffield on Juneteenth (last Tuesday), and we got sympathetic coverage in almost every paper.

Only one paper came out in favor of using eminent domain against the historic buildings. The Daily News published an article saying that it was cynical to stop the development of Brooklyn. The Daily News subscribes to the EDC's logic that the economy of Brooklyn would grind to a halt if the proposed parking lot and 1.5 acre grassy knoll were not built... well I'm slightly exaggerating, but check out this link to read for yourself:
http://duffieldst.blogspot.com/2007/06/daily-news-calls-grassy-knoll-key...

David Saltonstall of the Daily News has a very interesting piece on the unusually, shall we say, sanitary condition of Rudy Giuliani's mayoral archives. Seems Rudy's people snapped up over 2,000 boxes of records from City Hall when he left office, with the promise that the newly-ex-mayor would personally pay to have them privately archived.

And he did. Only, the files were returned without a detailed index -- which makes it extremely difficult to search them. What's more, based on what reporters have found so far, history seems to have decided to be somewhat kinder to Rudy since his people borrowed the records:

A file labeled "Private Life/Divorce" offers nothing more than a few old press clippings about his breakup with Donna Hanover, as well as a transcript from the May 2000 press conference where he described his then-girlfriend and now-wife, Judith Nathan, as "a very good friend."

Meanwhile, Hanover's papers as First Lady have been all but erased. "This subgroup was not filmed," is all the archive says.

Documents from the historic weeks after 9/11 seem similarly scant. Instead of memos detailing concerns about air quality or coordination among agencies, the record consists of a few dry reports that sketch efforts to restore the city bureaucracy. [...]

Errol Louis has a piece in today's Daily News worth quoting at length. The subject is, of course, L'Affaire Imus. Here's the link.

In this case, the college women slandered by Imus on national television and radio were the best of the best: high academic achievers at a school with tough standards, and hardworking, competitive athletes. Epiphanny Prince, a star freshman on the squad, is already a New York legend, scoring an unheard-of 113 points in a single high school game.

They did all anybody ever asked of them - they stayed out of trouble, got an education, worked hard and literally played by the rules. They deserved much more than to be dismissed as "nappy-headed ho's" before a national audience.

Imus also hit a raw nerve with his sneering contempt for black achievement, playing out the worst fear of many black professionals: that in the end, everything you ever learned or accomplished might end up counting for nothing, dismissed with a racist epithet by a group of chuckling, middle-aged white guys with power.

Exactly right. Your average racist believes (I suppose, and if there is an average) that blacks are, take your pick, lazy, stupid, ignorant, whatnot.

Except that these young women manifestly, clearly, eye-openingly, were not. Did it help them?

Of course not.

I've been taking the Times Empire Zone and Ben Smith to task today for being anti-Statenite.

Link Texthttp://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/its-election-day/#comments

Link Texthttp://www.r8ny.com/blog/ben_smith/turning_out_in_the_40th.html#comment-369392

Great piece by Wolcott on the ever-deepening irrelevance of the Daily News. The specific target is columnist Michael Goodwin, who, "never the victim of an original thought, is the News's foremost purveyor of the painfully obvious and invariably incorrect." But the broader target is the increasingly anachronistic nature of the News itself. Wolcott quotes Tom Watson:

The News suffers from an acute identity problem, a true personality crisis. The Archie Bunker base in New York has either died or moved away and the real working-class New Yorker is likely to be black or Hispanic or Asian and quite often, born someplace else. The News is out of touch with this growing, churning middle class economic powerhouse - a look at its opinion pages is a window into just how clueless the paper is. The News doesn't get this new middle class, and its lead opinion voice - Pulitzer winner Michael Goodwin - is cartoonishly out of kilter, pitching his faux dese, dems, and dose "common man" pablum to mere ghosts in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

Wolcott calls it

a nostalgia that must seem Etruscan to anyone under the age of AARP membership. It wouldn't matter if the rest of the paper kept pace with the city's changing demographics, but Pete Hamill's dream of a tabloid daily that would reach the rising immigrant class and address their concerns seems further away than ever, the victim of bureaucratic inertia and Mort Zuckerman's hobnobbing elitism.

And how. The entire New York City newspaper business is bizarrely out of touch with the actual city it serves. Let's review. Several years after the death of New York Newsday, our major English-language dailies are:

• One stuffy national broadsheet with a "liberal" editorial line but a tendency towards stenography in its reporting;
• Two right-wing tabloids aimed at the conservative white ethnic groups of about thirty years ago;
• One neoconservative vanity broadsheet (albeit with a good sports section); and
• Two low-wattage free subway papers whose prime contribution to the city is to double the amount of litter in our gutters on windy days.

Am I forgetting anything?

So when the hell will we get a newspaper that really has something to do with the actual people who live in New York, most of whom are not white, and almost none of whom are conservative?

Anyone? Anyone?

Har.

The Daily News published an editorial today about that Maureen O'Connell flyer; the editorial is the printed equivalent of standing on a table, pointing fingers and laughing.

In a campaign flyer featuring the scary mugs of Osama and Iranian nut job Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Maureen O'Connell makes the laughable claim that she's just the woman to defend New York from terrorists. Tel Aviv, too. She also cites "security expertise" not evident from her résumé as a nurse, lawyer, Assembly seat-warmer and county clerk. [...]

But why would a terrorist-fighter of O'Connell's talents want to waste her time in Albany, anyway? Surely the world would be safer with O'Connell, Maureen O'Connell, Clerk 007, working for the CIA. Or maybe Mossad.

That's gotta hurt.

The Daily News endorsed Craig Johnson today; oh, and by all means do check out Errol Louis' unusually terse, one-line announcement of same on The Daily Politics. Har. That musta been painful.

Voters in northwestern Nassau County go to the polls Tuesday for a pivotal special election for a state Senate seat. They should cast their ballots for Democrat Craig Johnson, who outshines his opponent on the issues and is committed to reforming Albany.

A county legislator, Johnson is running for a spot vacated by a Republican who took a top job under Gov. Spitzer. Electing him would leave Majority Leader Joe Bruno two seats from losing his grip on the Senate and move New York closer to wholesale reforms in one house of the Legislature. That's why Spitzer is behind Johnson.

Snip. There's more.

Best wishes to Ben Smith over at The Daily Politics! We'd sing for you, but seriously, you don't want that .

Oh, and in the same item linked above, the special counsel in the Hevesi affair releases his report; not pretty.

As set forth below, it is my view that there is a valid legal basis for a recommendation to the Senate that the Comptroller be removed and that aggravating circumstances of his conduct may very well warrant his removal from office.

One week to the election.

The New York Times reports on the crashing and burning of Senator Man on Dog. Snide aside: the reporter, Robin Toner, describes Santorum's current series of speeches, carrying the theme 'Vote for me or you die' to unexplored depths, as 'Churchillian'. I think I've read every speech Churchill gave between 1934 and 1946, and trust me, Santorum ain't that.

Also in the Times, Democrats seem set to gain seats in state legislatures around the country.

Another gift to oil companies, from the Bush administration and thus ultimately from you, the U.S. taxpayer. Don't expect a thank-you card.

In The Washington Post, the Decider speaks: 'America Loses' Under Democrats. Translation from wingnutese to English: "I am America, you peasants."

E.J. Dionne rips into republican negative ads, calling them 'trivial', 'seamy' and '[slimy]'.

Here we go: The Albany Times-Union reports someone spray-painted 'Fuck Bush' on a large American flag in Clifton Park. Cue the howling from the usual suspects about Democrats hating America.

And lastly, in The Daily News, Ben Smith notes that the police might have been called to the residence of Congresscritter John Sweeney, and that the records thereof, having illegally been covered up, must now be made public.