It’s the holiday weekend—which started on Monday, since so many workers (or not) build “bridges”—and it’s undeniable that frivolity’s in the air. You can smell it, hear it, taste it and see it, whether it’s the premature fireworks (in those municipalities where cherry bombs and Roman candles aren’t banned) or the red, white and blue bunting and flags displayed at big-box stores and the occasional urban house that still displays Old Glory on a front porch. (It could be that the stars and stripes are in abundance in many parts of the country, not dissimilar to blow-up Santas and friends-of-capitalism elves in December, but I’ll leave it to the mock-sociologists in the press who never leave the “Acela Corridor” to figure that one out.)
There was a curious juxtaposition this past week on the two leading “narratives,” one real, the other spun like rancid cotton candy. The panic and delight caused by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win in New York City on June 24th is a legitimate five-headed topic: that the 33-year-old Democratic socialist left the objectionable-on-so-many-levels Andrew Cuomo sputtering in his self-made squalor is delightful. His promise to rid the city of billionaires (we’ll see if he defeats incumbent Eric Adams in November), introduce city-operated supermarkets and free rides on city busses for all (a new haven for the “unhoused”) is grandiose, and I’d guess that he scales that back, moving just an inch to center as the election nears.
Conservatives are making fools of themselves by saying “burn New York down” and predicting a widescale exodus of current residents to states that don’t have the blessing of the looking-up-at-you Fidel. Doubtful. I can see young high-earners taking flight, but it’s not easy for wealthy (or almost-wealthy, depending on how Mamdani defines it) residents to sell a dwelling, switch their kids’ schools, forsake their favored gyms, hair salons and restaurants just like that. No magic wands available, not even in a Zohran-controlled paradise.
Reprising my evergreen complaint that The New York Times is at the tippy-top (of widely-trafficked if illusionist media organs) of misleading headlines, in the wake of the primary, Michele From Brooklyn’s latest column was festooned: “Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani.” There wasn’t any such “love” noted in Goldberg’s excitable gal’s essay (but more than a hint of “Michelle and Zohran sitting in a tree…) but guarded optimism from favored sources, such as the rabbi at her son’s Hebrew school. Goldberg did say his campaign was “magical,” though she frets about his “inexperience” and that he won’t be able to keep his insane “economic promises.” Mamdani’s the successor to 2015’s Trump (and if the President’s smart, no guarantee, he’ll ignore the NYC election), although social media’s a far different Garden of Eden today, and unlike so many automatons posing as reporters/pundits who’ve already coronated the male version of AOC, I haven’t an inkling about the winner. I hope he falls flat, but it’d be hilarious to see “progressive” Brooklynites decamp to New Jersey in a year to avoid punitive taxes.
Moving on to the ridiculous, I wasn’t surprised on Monday morning when The Today Show devoted five or so minutes to the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sanchez wedding, since that’s their meal ticket (and preferable, if you can imagine, to any “reporting” on world events). But the breathless story by Rory Satran in The Wall Street Journal was something else; realistically, that’s naiveté showing, or maybe the surfeit of hot peppers on a hero I wolfed down the night before.
Get this: “Well, it was never going to be low-key. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s Venice wedding has been the glitzy, rococo bonanza the world expected—and then some [I don’t believe the “world expected” shit, or cared]. Over multiple days of festivities well-documented by photographers, Sanchez and guests including Oprah Winfrey… have turned the waterways of Venice into a style spectacle rife with va-va-voom printed gowns, massive gems, tan, shiny, muscular limbs, just-so hair and photo-ready makeup.”
It’s said the “rococo bonanza” cost approximately $50 million, one-fifth of what Bezos casually paid for The Washington Post in 2013. It’s his money, and I couldn’t care less how he spends it, but the outrage from the left (while taking a break from swigging vintage Mamdani bubbly, and rubbing their hands on a facsimile of Alladin’s Lamp, anticipating a $30/hour minimum wage) was just as predictable as The Today Show’s mandatory silliness. People complained that Bezos, who pares his annual tax bill with a battery of lawyers, should’ve donated that sum to the impoverished, the government, or a center for free puberty blockers. The reality is, as a person posted on Twitter, that the $50 million was a windfall for clothing vendors, makeup impresarios, hotels, private plane companies, restaurateurs, and maybe 10-year-old Italian entrepreneurs with quickly-constructed gelato stands. Dollars and Euros feeding the economy: Michelle From Brooklyn and Zohran wouldn’t approve, but that’s a spinning top even they can’t control.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023