By By Chris Carvo
I turned on the television and saw countless ads for the next administration of Mayor Bloomberg. I looked at my cereal, not finding marshmallows of green clovers and yellow stars, but gray, head-shaped visages of Bloomberg’s emotionless scowl. I scratched my butt, and when the irritating itch did not leave, I looked in the mirror and saw “Ferrer’s zoning plans are poo” tattooed over my anus. Then I saw Bloomberg laughing maniacally, running, with tattoo gun in hand. I tried to question his tactics, but he scampered up my wall and out my tiny suite window, into the night.
I realize these are slight exaggerations, but what is not exaggerated is the amount Bloomberg spends on aggressive advertising campaigns. In 2001, Bloomberg spent at least $75 million on ads and now hopes to triple that number for the next upcoming election. I understand and commend the fact that he usually spends his own money on such lavish campaigns, but let’s look at this realistically.
First, Bloomberg boasts he is above the “corruption” other city officials are tempted to partake in. He uses his own wealth, but his money has a source too. Bloomberg’s job involves making deals to rent out computer terminals at $1,350 a month, to calculate financial information. These customers of the terminals go on to use the information in other businesses across the city. Like it or not, he is linked.
Second, his whole first term was and still is a “money interest,” because he is a walking, talking Monopoly board. Sure, he doesn’t take money from outside donators because other anterior interests may conflict with his own company when he has to “pay them back.” This is preposterous, now his business becomes the public’s business exclusively. Let’s hope his two competitors, Reuters and Thomson, never come up with a financial “cure for cancer”-it would never get accredited by a mayor with other interests. It’s like a president running his administration with only one exclusive contractor. Ok, terrible example.
Before the advertising spending increase, only 43 percent of the voting public favored his job performance. A quick and cool $30 million later and now 67 percent of the public approves of the job he is doing. Come on now, New Yorkers, clean the drool off your lips and fight the urge to associate the size of the guy’s spending with his capabilities.
Most city Democrats never would have voted for him until he was seen riding Giuliani’s coattails through ashy and still-smoldering streets in 2001. New Yorkers fooled by the old stigma, “more money makes you better,” ruin the democratic process before it has time to inevitably be desecrated. It corrupts corruption!
This is the same mayor who attempted to revamp city spending to pay for a new football stadium in an attempt to attract the International Olympic Agency. Sure, the Olympics in New York would be cool (by cool I mean a logistical nightmare), but this proposal came at a time when police and fire stations deserved much needed renovations. Anyone who has walked down Times Square knows the police station is “that shanty over there near that cool-looking MTV superstructure.”
In addition to the amount of ads, the ads themselves feature Bloomberg stating his slogan, “Together, we’ll do even more,” in several different languages, attempting to swing the minority vote. This can certainly be considered overkill considering most voters, minority or not, have absolutely no idea who Fernando Ferrer is. The ads attempt to expose and mock Ferrer’s lack of accomplishments, when he does that quite naturally himself, and for free. Bloomberg’s credentials are far more superior (school-system improvements, affordable housing programs), when compared to Ferrer’s claim of “lowering crime in the Bronx.”
So then why is Bloomberg doing this? My guess to that question is the same answer to why somebody would produce a snuff film, or why Achilles dragged Homer behind his horse outside Troy’s castle walls. Because they can.
Chris Carvo is a graduate student at the University. You may email him at [email protected]
