None of this stopped New York City’s press corps from laughing it up with the mayor last night.
“I know only five of you in here have actual press credentials,” Bloomberg reportedly quipped, a reference to his office’s assertion that a mere five of the twenty-six journalists arrested overall displayed city-issued press passes.
“There were so many little jokes” about OWS over the course of the night, Nida Khan, a reporter/producer who attended told me. “You could see the awkward reaction from people in the room. Some laughed at these jokes, others were just uncomfortable.”
Bloomberg bestowed “gag gifts” upon a number of journalists, quipping that they “are reserved only for ‘the one percent,’” according to Fernanda Santos, an education reporter for the New York Times. Santos herself received a fake Department of Education “VIP Security Pass.”
“I had no reservations going to the party,” Santos told me. “It’s a good time and a fun tradition the mayor’s press office started some years back.”
In return, Dave Seifman, a longtime columnist for the New York Post, presented Bloomberg with gag gifts on behalf of “Room 9” — the group of journalists who regularly cover City Hall. Rich Lamb, of CBS Radio, served as his “Vanna White,” according to an attendee.
One of the gifts was a tarp that Seifman said “they picked up from the Sanitation Department on the West Side,” Khan recalled. This, of course, was a mocking reference to the NYPD’s forced seizure of tarps, tents, laptops, and many other items in Zuccotti Park, which were thrown into sanitation trucks and dumped in a massive pile at a warehouse-type facility on West 57th Street.
Bloomberg draped himself in the tarp and posed briefly with it, attendees said. Todd Maisel of the New York Daily news tweeted a photo of Bloomberg smiling from ear-to-ear.
The meeting is presumed to be off-the-record, though no formal guidelines are unstated, according to several journalists who were there. Maisel, the photographer, described the mood as “light-hearted.”
“The mayor sometimes deals with tough issues with humor,” he said. After taking the photo, Maisel told me, one of Bloomberg’s aides came over and expressed concern to him about the optics. “They try to deflect bad press from the mayor. But the mayor — he doesn’t care that much.”
And on the menu, according to an attendee?“Pulled pork on tortilla chips, shrimp dumplings, pizza squares with sausage, pizza squares with mushrooms, and some kind of spicy (buffalo?) chicken stew, served in small white cups with a slice of jalapeno pepper on top.”
Governor Bloomberg yucking it up with the press proving that he might be one of the funniest despots out. He's a regular "Shecky" Hussein.
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