The only Easter basket I got at home this morning was filled with rock candy minus the candy. Donna is getting to be one hell of a comic. She did the egg hunt on the Mansion south lawn again and that’s her side, so I couldn’t even watch. I understand Andrew hid some of the eggs in the NYPD secure room attached to my private bath and three members of my personal detail sat or stepped on them. One was so spooked, he emptied his 9mm at a cracked shell.
I don’t understand why Howard is reassigning some of those white members of the Street Crime Unit to my personal detail. He says he has to create vacancies for the 50 blacks and Latinos, but these SCU guys can be very, very scary. I went to a department store for one of those no-clothing-sales-tax-day PR stunts and Rudy Washington was afraid to reach for his wallet. Had to pay for a plaid tie myself.
Howard just might be getting a little hot under the collar at me anyway. He might’ve heard I’ve been getting some of my “I-support-Howard” statements from Steinbrenner. Actually, it’s too bad Don Zimmer’s gonna be so busy this summer or I just might send him in for Howard. Both of them couldn’t make it past a metal detector if their pockets were empty.
Can you believe that Oscar thing? I know Howard was hoping to replace Jimmy Smits on NYPD Blue, but glad-handing his way up the red carpet is very, very ridiculous. I told him never to smile on camera so I know he wasn’t aware he was getting shot. What really pisses me off is that he convinced me he was going out there to get some head-busting tips from LAPD brass. Sure glad no one in the press remembers me blasting Lee “Out of Town” Brown when he was Dinkins’s top cop.
What about Howard riding the lipstick man’s jet? And tuxing up at a five-star hotel? How many gun and parking permits does Perelman’s personal army want anyway? Hope Howard’s not using Richard Roberts to get a Perelman job for Marilyn Mode. We’ve got our own Vernon Jordan! At least a son-in-law.
Of course Howard says who am I to talk about intergalactic travel? I can’t even do the executive budget presentation this year because I’m appearing at a
4-H Club hog show in Chemung County that day. Joe Lhota’s gotta do it, charts and all. And what a budget it’s gonna be! How’s this for in-your-face priorities? I’m proposing a billion for new stadiums, 1600 new cops, $65 million for MOMA, and $25 million for the Metropolitan Museum, while I’m killing a $7 million merit scholarship program for CUNY students with “B” averages, plus 100 percent of the city funding for both the Youth Development and Delinquency Program and George Soros’s After Three program of post-school-day activities. I hate to miss that Q&A, but, as they say, duty calls!
Buffalo sure beats the Bronx! Two years of cow country for this big-city boy! My newest very, very best buddy Joe Bruno says I really hit a home run reversing myself on the wetlands development issue up by our reservoirs in Delaware County. “Shed the Watershed” is my new motto! Raw sewage for the reservoirs and no trash in Staten Island is my two-point environmental program! I’m a Recycled Republican!
Loved those protests at headquarters! Everybody who thought that was hurting me has never been north of Wheeler Avenue. Me versus Al— talk about a winning formula in Poughkeepsie. Even in his three-piece, Reverend Ton can’t hide all that fried chicken. I was salivating for that Koch arrest. Betcha the producer of his judge show told him no arrest or no robes. Wasn’t that blood-pressure scam at the gym so “precious”? Mayor Mouth versus Mayor Man! What a collection of losers. Even Ruth Messinger showed up, first time out of the house since 1997. Tried to get an Attica guard assigned to her pen, but those guys said they weren’t coming back to town for another Giuliani stunt.
I got to admit I hated those grandstand one-on-one peace talks with Fields and McCall or, as Johnnie “Millbrook” Dyson put it, snacks with blacks. There’s nothing worse than a humble-pie photo op. It’s amazing how very, very little it takes to chill the Times. I’ll do anything, so long as they don’t make me meet with Donna!
Of course it was two days of docility and right back to the tried and true four-uncles-were-cops and let’s-stand-by-our-men rhetoric. Nothing Bashful about My Blue! I just love the way the tabloids lap up my cop shtick. The numbers I keep putting out there are just so very, very beautiful. No one even notices that my most restrained cops in America data— using the puny percent of cop killings per thousand cops— is predicated on the oldest statistical trick in the book. We’ve got three times as many cops as the second biggest PD in the country! We’ve got more cops behind desks than Chicago has on the streets! So how big a surprise is it that when you stretch the number of incidents out over a force that size, we look good?
I keep talking about the drop in cop killings and no one figures out that they’ve fallen a tiny percent of the drop in the murder rate, or the drop in the number of shots fired by perps at cops. Hell, there’ve been twice as many cop suicides in my five years than there’ve been cops dying on duty, yet Howard and I can always make them look like victims laying their lives on the line. Maybe Howard does deserve an Oscar!
Every new number is another opportunity! How about me pushing the Dow over 10,000! I was right there with Grasso for the clanging of the very, very big bell! All it took was giving the Stock Exchange $560 million for a new home and it got me on CNN. Four hundred fifty thousand fewer slugs on welfare! Seven thousand people alive who would’ve been killed if I hadn’t stopped murderers in their tracks! A couple hundred thousand new private sector jobs! A stat for every occasion! And if the crime figures go up, we’ve got Reverend Al to blame. If the job numbers go down, we’ve got Al Gore.
I’m sailing toward the Senate. Bruno and Powers and the Washington Republicans will make sure Pataki can’t stop me. Mucha ain’t much! And Hillary hardly looks like she’s in fighting shape to me. She’s got hips the size of Harding’s. Murdoch’s gonna send her so many warning shots Bill is gonna start looking good to her. Bring back Vince Foster! Send the SCU after Ickes! Everything’s so beautiful I can turn these teeth into a smile at the drop of an illegal stock tip! If I beat Hillary, who can doubt I’m presidential timber? And if I run strong against her and lose, Governor Palooka better watch out in 2002! I figure Hillary takes six months to decide no and then I do the Nada to Nita!
They say I don’t play well enough with others to succeed in the Senate. They say I’m a command freak. They even carry signs with me in Hitler drag. I say the worst elements of society are Rudybashers. To attack me is bias just like attacks on blacks are bias. We have every protester’s face on videotape. My memory is as wide as my forehead. When I get to Washington, I’m going to create the Senate Police and we will see how well I play. I get mad and get even.