The New York Post has a characteristically breathless story today alleging that “crackheads, bums and hookers rule Washington Square Park.” According to the Post, “as many as 20 strung-out vagrants” and “apparent druggies” are “shuffling around like zombies and occasionally spewing curses at each other.”
The Post never misses an opportunity to sound the drumbeat of rising disorder in #deBlasiosNY, disorder that, inexplicably, always seems to come wearing brown skin. This is the paper that routinely mocks the homeless, sounds the bum Klaxon, warns of an impending squeegee-man apocalypse, stokes the signal-fire to warn of the coming urine flood, and even sends hapless reporters to impersonate homeless people outside Gracie Mansion. Today’s alarming tale of drug use in a park where property managers walk their dogs and fresh-faced NYU students will soon arrive is right in the Post’s wheelhouse.
But the Post, in its modesty, buried the lede in this story, and it’s a doozy: The alleged crack dealers caught on camera by the paper’s photographer are reading yesterday’s New York Post.
So there you have it. Discerning [alleged] crack dealers choose the New York Post.