BIG NEWS! A Republican mayor comes out... gasp... PRO-SCIENCE!! ZOMG!!!
Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, recently was asked to give the graduating commencement speech at Johns Hopkins University. During his speech he did what any public speaker is required to do, which is engage in silly, possibly stupid jovial monologging to the audience. This is always especially true of high profile people, who feel this need to "come down to our level" with the use of jocularity, so I was not surprised to see the first couple of minutes of Bloomberg's 15 minute speech were occupied with some fairly lame jokes and dumb attempts to portray himself as "down with the kids" in the graduating audience. I think the only one that worked was a joke about never eating from a local Oriental take-out place again, which got light chuckles. Some of the comments started to get a little politically bent, and I was thinking that there must be as much as 50% of the audience who may not appreciate his comments... and then he whipped out his A-game.
He started into a surprisingly detailed discussion about how science was under political attack these days and it was the responsibility of the graduates to lead the fight into tomorrow. He touched on everything from stem cell research to "intelligent design" to popular perceptions of scientific facts gone horribly wrong in the media (specifically the Terry Schiavo case where she was ABSOLUTELY BRAIN DEAD, specified she should die under those conditions, her husband wanted to end it, but her side of the family, and indeed all of the media and America, wanted to fight to keep her on life support forever). He seemed to insult and assault both political parties, although it was of course overwhelmingly directed towards components of the current Dubya-lead Republican presidency and hyper-hysterical right-wing shills like Fox News/MSNBC/Rush Limbaugh/etc who simply refuse to show any side other than their own.
By the way TV-shill guys, stop fucking saying you are "fair and balanced"... you are not and you don't WANT to be. Stand up for what you believe in, be fucking men, and say "hey bitch, this is what I think, you want to bitch about your shit go get your own TV show, and suck dick if you don't like it you Commie Pinko Hippy Slacker!". I think you would have a lot more respect from some quarters, but I suppose the illusion of neutrality is necessary to hold the audience numbers needed to hold your advertisers up for incredibly high rates.
As I understand the legend, about 6 years ago Bloomberg was just another bored billionaire who decided to run in politics, which in his case was for the upcoming vacancy in the NYC mayor's office when incumbent Giuliani finished his term. The Democratic party was rife with experienced candidates (almost impossible to believe, I know, given the awful choices we usually get for president) and the Republican party was not. Even though Bloomberg had been a Democrat during most of his life, he switched parties to run for the Republican nomination. The Democrats had a very hard and bloody party election, with much in-fighting and vitriol that did little to aid thier image in the media, and the public responded by leaning away from them. As it turned out, the whole country was leaning to right as a result of FUD in the wake of the terrorist acts of 9/11, so Bloomberg appears to have seen the writing on the wall and did a flip-flop to the side that was popular AND easy to win. The fact that he was a billionaire helped as he spent a mind-boggling average of $70 per vote he received during his first election, and then that amount climbed up to an earth-shattering _$100 PER VOTE_, which apparently make Bloomberg's race the most expensive non-presidential race in world history. Wow. Wait... did I fuck up? Is this the same guy with smacky science and political comment at JHU? Quite possibly. Read on.
Bloomberg hasn't really gone on record with "formal plans" for what he will do when he leaves office in early 2009, but it would appear that it doesn't include hanging out with Republicans. He's been distancing himself ever since he was reelected, mostly in the form of opinions and work in the NYC mayor's office that some conservatives would find upsetting (like this entire commencement speech). This is not to say that he is without Republican ties; Bloomberg has been one of the biggest fundraisers for Bush, since he "switched parties" from Democrat to Republican in order to get Giuliani's endorsement in the 2001 NYC mayoral race. Let's not forget this is the Bloomberg in Bloomberg television; for years his news network(s) have ignored Bush's attacks on science, just like the rest of the mass media. One political commentator says that with Bloomberg talking science in public speeches for the media, yet raising money for Bush behind the scenes can be likend to the same double-talk that characterized Yasser Arafat when he would talk of diplomacy in English on television, and speak of terror and hate in Arabic through the grapevine. Wow. Harsh. I would like to hope that he is someone who screwed the Reps into thinking he was one of them just because he was a "spoiled billionaire", and that he always intended to run a subversive race. This would require so much clever calculation and planning it would almost seem like, well, a Republican conspiricy! I will laugh my ass off if he writes a bio one day that reveals this was the case, as I think it would mark the first time in history that a Dem was smart enough and well-equipped enough to fight dirty like a Rep. :)
So, Bloomberg's speech was impressive. Since he has already won his second term he doesn't have to play nice as much as he once did, and it would appear as thought the gloves are coming off in at least some areas and in some venues. Bloomberg cited the Hopkins motto of 'Veritas vos liberabit' which he said translated to 'the truth shall set you free'; he went on to observe that it is the duty of the assembled shiny new scientists to adhere to that motto and not allow it to become 'you shall be free to set the truth". Not bad, dude.
See it for yourself (and read the transcription) at the NYC.gov's mayoral sub-site:
Bloomberg's JHU commencement speech
Of course the funniest comment I saw regarding the news coverage of Bloomberg's pro-science blame-citing speech came from an overseas poster to a discussion forum: "...and it's news that the mayor of some city has made a pro-science speech? What kind of just-crawling-out-from-the-dark-ages country are we talking about?"
Word to that, my man.
(C) 2006, Don Stratton
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