Seeing the world through doom-colored glasses
: The Washington Post acts as if New York is collapsing into ruin before our very eyes and, thus, as if it’s an act of hypocrisy or failure for Bush to come here for the convention.
“New York,” a recent newspaper article proclaims, “it’s HOT.”
Except that a closer look at this largest of U.S. cities reveals much that’s not so hot. New York’s unemployment rate jumped in January from 8.0 to 8.4 percent, the worst performance among the nation’s top 20 cities. It has lost 230,000 jobs in the past three years. Demand for emergency food has risen 46 percent over the past three years, and 900,000 New Yorkers receive food stamps. Inflation, foreclosures, evictions and personal bankruptcies are rising sharply. Fifty percent of the city’s black males no longer are employed.
President Bush will journey here this August for the Republican convention, and he is expected to celebrate the revival of the nation’s financial capital since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But at this point, that recovery is characterized more by its weakness — and by the stark disparities between rich and poor.
How’s Boston doing? And D.C.? No more poverty there? Losta jobs? No racial/cultural divides?
: And while we’re exuding civic pride, some damned Texan at SXSW insults Newark.
