The latest lavishly illustrated missive from writer/graphic designer Scott Turner, who runs Rocky Sullivan's pub quiz on Thursday nights.
There's so much going on in the world these days. So much that
even the kind of perfunctory three-item descriptive you'd normally find
in the previous sentence ("wars, recession, Britney Spears shagging her backup dancer") can never do justice to the colossal maelstrom of life's machinations.
That's why it's time to check in with America's Greatest Letters To The Editor page — the New York Daily News'. Now, I'm not here to plug the Daily News. The paper's only dependable sections are the sports pages' and their smart, progressive writers like Michael O'Keeffe and Filip Bondy, and the comics section, featuring Mutts, Doonesbuy, F-Minus, Get Fuzzy, Sherman's Lagoon and the wonderfully absurd Pearls Before Swine. It's also fun watching Blondie try stay current, and Beetle Bailey, Gasoline Alley and Annie come off like your grumpy old uncle.
F-Minus
While "New York's Hometown Newspaper"
seems to covet the city it lives in, its out-of-touch editorial board
follows in the footsteps of the mayor it so loves. Hypocrisy and
double-standards are every day's soup de jour at the Daily News. The News
will publish a bulldog special report on the state-government
corruption up in Albany, then run editorials supporting the most
inertial corruption monster in the city today, Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards fiasco.
By the way, here's what I don't get about the current state of the
Ratner's Folly: the Atlantic Yards project is hanging on by the skin of
its teeth…
…those cavity-filled chompers are desperately
clutching a thread fraying in dozens of places: Ratner's evaporating
finances, land-acquisition, community opposition, world economy, Nets stinkyness problems, and more importantly, the fiscal fragility of his allies — Barclays Bank, Grammercy Capital, New York City and State, Ratner's parent company in Cleveland, Nets partners, team sponsors, the MTA, etc., etc., etc…
…that fraying thread, of course, is tethered to the teetering house-of-cards that is America's
and the world's crumbling economies. There's not a one of us who would
put our money into a project this unlikely to ever succeed.
skin of the teeth, hanging by a thread, house of cards — The Atlantic Yards Frightening Metaphor Index
Yet Michael Bloomberg, David Patterson, Sheldon Silver, Marty Markowitz and a phalanx of government agencies are still sticking with this Rube Goldberg contraption. At least Goldberg's convoluted chaos machines worked and were harmless fun. This thing in Brooklyn won't work and has already harmed the borough in ways too many to count.
plates full of empty plates…or else they'd get right on this Atlantic yards thing…
Circling back to Go!, the letters in the Daily News
cheer me up when I get overwhelmed with Atlantic Yards-grade
balderdash. They're short, odd, persnickety, curmudgeonly bolts of
insistent prattle that have nothing to do with Ghana's gross-national-product figures or death-cage analyses of Keynesian economic constructs.
Voice of the People!
Here, then, are some of the best from the last few days. The Daily News
calls its letters page Voice of the People, and its letter-writers
Voicers. Remember, these pointed postulations are printed in their
entirety:
Don't
execute terrorists who are behind bars in our prisons. Let them live
to be 100 before they can go to their 72 virgins. — Josephine
Ambrosio, Ozone Park
DOT please fix the pavement on the bridges between Flatbush Ave.
and Erskine St. on the Belt Parkway. My car's front end can't handle
it anymore. — Michael Murphy, New Hyde Park, L.I.
My dear old
papa always warned his children to be wary of people with no lips, a
prominent feature of Bernie Madoff. Too bad all those people who lost
millions did not have a smart pappy as I did. — Louis DiAngelo,
Plainview, L.I.
After watching President Obama's appearance on Jay Leno and his
subsequent giggling interview with "60 Minutes," I wonder if he wasn't
high on something more than life. He does have a history of drug
abuse." — James D. Bitros, Manhattan
To the naysayers, the doomsday prophets, the conspiracy nuts, the
right-wing Rush Limbaugh crowd, those who are already bashing, trashing
and hoping for the failure of the Obama White house: Get a life. —
Geoffrey Lynch, Brooklyn
Can someone tell me the difference between the fellow on Long
Ilsand who started a fire so he could be the hero and put it out, and
Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, who keep saying "If
we don't act now…" so they can ram through panicked legislation that
lines their buddies' pockets? — Jefferson Thomas, Jackson Heights
Re "Baby just can't wait for train!": this story reminds me of a
poster on the subway: "If you feel sick, stay home." I want to add,
"If you are in labor, don't get on the train." The subways are late
enough already. Don't give them another excuse. — Qi Tony (Eve)
Feng, Brooklyn
I can understand the reason for the government's separation of
church and state. But why is it okay for politicians to be joined at
the hip with the Devil? — Charles M. Tedone, Briarwood.
Hmmm…the FBI says that Fridays are the most popular day of the week for bank robberies. It's time I became a Voicer and warned everyone