Depending on your guru, there are up to 12 stages of grief after a death or divorce. There are also rituals for politicians caught in scandals, but Mayor de Blasio is headed for a new record with his serially desperate proclamations.
Unfortunately, he is still stuck at the first stage — denial.
He initially insisted the investigations were no big deal, but when the facts shouted otherwise, he adopted a vow of silence. “I’m not going to be speaking about this after today,” he said a month ago.
The vow lasted about 24 hours, broken when the mayor’s chief investigator was forced to recuse himself from the probe. Until then, aide Mark Peters and the mayor said Peters could stay even though he had been de Blasio’s fund-raiser in 2013. “I’m glad he recused himself, that was the right decision,” de Blasio said, conceding no mistake.
That’s three stages of denial.
De Blasio soon reversed himself about dealing with prosecutors, too. After insisting he had not heard from US Attorney Preet Bharara’s office despite an avalanche of press reports, de Blasio announced his campaign lawyer contacted the prosecutor. He said lawyer Barry Berke “reached out at my request and simply said we’d like to be helpful in any way we can.”
From there, a steady drip-drip-drip of anecdotes showing a pay-to-play culture led the mayor to new defenses. He blamed his staff after a fishy real-estate deal netted investors a $72 million profit on a formerly city-owned Manhattan building. “I’m not happy about the fact that I didn’t hear about it in advance before it became public,” he said.
That’s five stages of denial.
The trickle turned into a tsunami when a state Board of Elections report charged the mayor and his team with “willful and flagrant” violations of campaign-finance laws. The charges brought more prosecutors into the hunt, and opened the window on de Blasio’s Big Idea.
Simply put, he would harvest millions of dollars from individuals and unions with business before the city to help push his agenda. The pattern suggests the donors didn’t necessarily care how the money was used, but many expected something in return. Evidence shows many got something.
After the report landed, the mayor spent 72 hours in hiding, giving the impression he was out of excuses.
He wasn’t. He was concocting four new versions of denial that featured a counterpunch, taxpayer cash, self-pity and conspiracy theories.
It started with a blistering attack against the state charges, with a de Blasio lawyer saying they reveal “a complete disregard of the most fundamental aspects of the state’s election laws.”
The mayor repeated his refrain that “everything we’ve done is legal and appropriate,” then let his budget do the talking.
Stage 7 was a bundle of giveaways to favored groups and promises to keep the gravy train rolling. He aimed to beat the rap by keeping backers fat and happy because, as I wrote, he knows “a contented public with a short attention span is a crooked pol’s best friend.”
These days, Mayor Santa Claus is turning darker and sees nameless enemies. “How convenient that when we’re doing a lot of work to help everyday people, there’s all sorts of efforts being made to obscure that work,” he claimed. Stage 8 denial also features attacks on “billionaire media owners” and “hedge funds” and “voices of the status quo.”
Still, he won’t identify any evildoers, though he came close Friday. The mayor charged in a radio interview that the “personnel involved are hired from the same place in Albany” and located the source in “the executive branch.”
By my count, when de Blasio finally calls Gov. Cuomo his Darth Vader, he will have reached Stage 10 — without ever escaping denial. How many more head fakes will he try before finally admitting that the man in the mirror is the problem?
Bam’s gender bender
When Barack Obama took office, he vowed to “transform” America. Few imagined that eight years later, he would attack the very definitions of what it means to be a man or a woman.
Yet that is the potential outcome of the White House directive ordering every public school to allow transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their “gender identity.” Schools that refuse could lose federal aid.
The Great Bathroom War won’t end at the toilet or even the showers. The directive, along with the Justice Department suit against North Carolina for requiring everyone to use the bathroom that matches the gender on their birth certificate, has no limiting principle.
If it is discrimination to define gender by anatomy for purposes of bathrooms, all legal and traditional distinctions could be at risk. Personal choice, or whim, would become the sole definition of gender.
The social implications are breathtaking. What is to stop a mediocre male tennis player from declaring himself a woman and claiming the right to compete on the women’s circuit?
Under President Obama’s decree, it could be discrimination to bar him. It might be discrimination to call him a him.
In virtually all sports, athletes compete against members of the same gender. Is that now bigotry, punishable by whatever sanction Washington dreams up?
Today the feds threaten to take away dissenters’ money. Could it be their liberty tomorrow?
The history of “central planners,” as economist Friedrich Hayek warned in “The Road to Serfdom,” is that soft socialism never ends there. There must be enforcement, and the more invasive the rule, the more dissenters there are, requiring ever more enforcement.
But how would cops round up the usual suspects? With many departments already dropping race as an identifier, a public alert that is also gender-free would go like this: Human standing 6 feet tall wanted for questioning.
Under Obama, a transformed America is bypassing tragedy and going straight to farce.
Clintons’ scandal powder keg
The Wall Street Journal report about Bill Clinton’s comely “close friend” getting money from his foundation and taxpayers raises the prospect that all the Clinton scandals could come together in one huuuge explosion.
Maybe the “close friend” had access to Hillary’s home-brew server during her alleged trips to the Clintons’ Chappaqua house. Maybe she read classified documents. Maybe she’s a Bernie Sanders delegate. Maybe she worked at Goldman Sachs. Maybe she knows Donald Trump. Maybe she’s related to Monica Lewinsky. Maybe she’s a Russian spy.
It’s the Clintons. Always assume the worst.
Dean gets off easy
The logic behind the sentencing of Dean Skelos and his son, Adam, escapes me. Federal Judge Kimba Wood gave the former Senate GOP leader five years in prison for corrupting his office and sentenced Adam to 6 ¹/₂ years. While Adam made threats and got jobs through his father’s corruption, the scam rested on the father’s abuse of official power. Why does he get off easier?
Also, five years isn’t much compared to former Speaker Sheldon Silver’s 12-year sentence for corrupting his office. While there were different judges involved, more consistency would make more sense.