ROY EDROSO

Whack

At the dawn of post-Giuliani New York, City Journal types fear Mayor Bloomberg hasn't the belly to put squeegee men and Sharptons in their place. To get his attention, some have resorted to theatrics. At Opinion Journal, Heather Mac Donald presents purported quotes from "people on the receiving end of Mayor Giuliani's effort to enforce the law equally regardless of gender, race or class":

Returning to the life of crime was not an option, they said, because law enforcement in New York City had become too strict. 'It's not getting better, it's getting worse,' said a man with a ponytail, shaking his head ruefully. 'You can't stand on the corner too long without being confronted by a police officer, and you'd better have an ID.' Kevin, a boyish-looking ex-con with huge tortoise-shell glasses, recalled the halcyon days of trivial penal sentences and the criminal culture they spawned. 'In the '70s and '80s, all you got was a slap on the wrist. If you didn't have a game, you was a square,' he reported. 'But selling drugs is whack now, with the time they give you now. It took me being up there [in prison] to see that the game is no longer a game.'

Where have we seen "Kevin" and the "man with a ponytail" before? In Death Wish, perhaps, or The Warriors, or other New York apocalyptic fantasies. Like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, they swing between exalted speech ("confronted by a police officer") and stilted slang ("selling drugs is whack"), and speak the hard lessons of the streets in epigrams reminiscent of The Beggar's Opera, in style if not in quality. Are they believable? Let us be kind; Mac Donald has a winning flair for the genre. Should public patience with his administration falter, perhaps Mr. Bloomberg can stake some of his remaining millions on a cautionary film, scripted by Mac Donald, and titled New York: Whack No More, My Lady.

http://www.city-journal.org
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001665

Culture War

For many pundits, the War on Terror is mainly the old culture war by other means.

Consider Michael Thomas, New York Observer gasbag-in-residence, who says this week that America's "payback" for 9/11 "must be as much a matter of civic restitution as military retribution." Not content with the incineration of Afghan warlords, he seeks "a way to restore an appreciation of the past--specifically the Western tradition in thought and art," amongst the young 'uns, as well as a return to "conscience," by which he means, it would seem, pangs of the same among the fashionable folks ("the Usual Suspects") he continually excoriates in his column.

Speaking of those, Thomas also asserts that "someone putting a Stinger missile into the Four Seasons (which is to the Usual Suspects what the Galapagos are to guano birds) at lunchtime should be considered for the Medal of Freedom." Be not shocked, gentle reader. Since 9/11, when Everything Changed, to wish death on one's enemies, foreign or domestic, is acceptable even in the heretofore civil pages of the pink paper.

http://www.observer.com/pages/midas.asp