The Times piece also reminds readers about the mayor's 2001 remarks in NY Magazine when, commenting on his own spending, he said, "At some point you start to look obscene." What's interesting here is the acknowledgement by "disbelieving" Bloomberg aides who said that there was no intention of slowing down because:
it was his intense spending that led to his recent surge in the polls and it would make no sense to let up just before Election Day.What the Times doesn't touch on is the potential of the "overkill" and "bullying" to backfire after the mayor's reelection. As we have pointed out, this kind of manufactured consent can have a post-coital backlash and once a crisis emerges it will force the mayor to make hard decisions that he is not only ill-prepared to make from a philosophical standpoint but for which he has not prepared the voters.
If that should occur the very triumphalist quality of the Bloomberg message will come back to literally bite the mayor on the ass. The canonization of Mayor Mike in some editorial quarters may also contribute to exacerbating the intensity of the potential backlash.
Rolling Bloomberg Gathers a Moss
In his usual dew-eyed fashion, NYU prof Mitchell Moss, described by the paper as a "informal advisor" to Bloomberg, defends the mayor's continued ad blitz, trotting out some clichés that not even Mitch himself believes. Moss (they should coin a new phrase here: "Mitch advertising") talks about the feared Democratic Party infrastructure, the same apparatus we guess that propelled Gifford to his 10% triumph.
The only advice we'd offer Moss is not to attempt to publish this nonsense in any scholarly journal. If he keeps it up this "boon companion" can star in the sequel of Les Miserables as the "Master of the House" (the toady line being most apropos).
