Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Donde Esta Miguelito?

As Daily Politics is reporting, more and more media is wondering about the mayor's weekend whereabouts: "NYDN City Hall Bureau Chief Adam Lisberg kindly passes along this transcript of Mayor Bloomberg's Q&A, which includes some discussion of the fact that he wasn't around (as Lisberg blogged here) during the Staten Island Ferry crash.

Josh Robin, NY1: how was your weekend?

Bloomberg: "It was fine. How was yours? Good. Any other questions? This is not a social thing. We're trying to make it business."

Robin: "There had been complaints about you not responding to the ferry crash..."

Bloomberg: "I didn't hear 'em, so I don't know whether there are. But I'm sure if you reported them, you've found somebody to complain. What was the problem?"

Robin: "Can you just anecdotally, this has been been a topic for several years, what is your thought about your presence at, being at these big disasters?"

Now Andy Wolf  has been keeping tabs on the weekend warrior for some time, but it's nice that the local press is finally paying attention to Bloomberg's patrician sojourns-and what about the concept of addition by subtraction? Seriously, it is annoying that the guy spent so much money to keep the job only to disappear on the weekend to get in a few rounds of golf near his Bermuda mansion. Or maybe, he was somewhere else-as City Room speculates: "Wonderers were left to wonder -– was the mayor at one of his many other pieds-à-terre, in London, or Vail, or outside West Palm Beach? (A person in Bermuda who has reliably tracked the mayor’s movements in the past said that he did not visit the island, where he owns a waterfront estate, over the weekend.)"

But between putz, he was monitoring the ferry episode from his cell phone, Daily Politics informs us:

 "Bao Ong, NYT: "You said you were monitoring it. Where were you monitoring it from?"

Bloomberg: "I'm monitoring it by phone. And that's, made sure that we have the proper people there. You know, we have a 24-7 operation that runs all the time, and we have lots of phenomenally competent people, and that's what we're supposed to do. And that's what we're going to continue to do. Any other topics?"

Here we are cutting senior centers and closing firehouses, but the crack Bloomberg managerial team is on the job-24/7. If we wanted a part timer we could have always retained Mike as the official city greeter-after all, we remember that Bud Palmer, protocol majordomo of the Lindsay administration, was a great golfer too.