Bill’s song and dance
It’s a thing now — isn’t it, President-elect Donald Trump? — for politicians to scamper to the social media mountaintop to sing their own praises with arrogant indifference to facts. Sad! Mayor de Blasio the apprentice outdoes even the red-capped crooner-in-chief with an outlandish taxpayer-powered song-and-dance operation promoting Hizzoner on the eve of his reelection campaign, within a hair’s breadth of laws limiting self-promotion on the public dime.
Mayor, show the good sense to shut down this rip-off of an off-off-off-Broadway show before its run turns to epic embarrassment — or, worse, a sequel to already beyond-the-pale blurring of official duties and personal political ambition.
Bright and early Tuesday morning, with the Daily News front page recounting “Tales of mayor’s roughest year yet,” the mayor’s Twitter and Facebook feeds unspooled a wacky mockumentary video in which two Broadway stars and First Lady Chirlane McCray purport to demo for the mayor, who’s listening in on a cellphone, his soaring accomplishments of 2016.
In song. With charts. Flashing the cryptic hashtag #alwaysnewyork and a satirical tone off-key to honest achievements touted, such as a million potholes filled, neighborhood policing taking root and affordable housing preserved.
Then: Cut to McCray, who in all seriousness pleads with New Yorkers in mental distress to dial the city’s new NYC Well hotline for assistance.
The spectacle’s punchline: de Blasio deems the effort “too elaborate. Maybe we should just do a couple of tweets.” Uh. Ha.
Such is the underwhelming stagecraft of Hizzoner’s new 15-head “creative communications” team, paid $75,000 each to broadcast the mayor’s message without the meddlesome fact-checking of news reporters.
The mayor’s new media adventures tread willfully close to the limit of the allowable. Had the spot emerged just five days hence, it would likely have been forbidden by a City Charter ban on taxpayer-funded self-promotion in an election year.
Had de Blasio been a state official and not a city one, the ad would likely have been forbidden by a state ethics law ban on public officials appearing in taxpayer-funded promotions.
But just because de Blasio can get away with his own pale imitation of a “Hamilton” matinee cast street video doesn’t mean it’s anything close to a good idea to spend his constituents’ hardearned dollars on his own aggrandizement.
It’s no secret de Blasio doesn’t always like how he looks in the headlines — least of all when they remind New Yorkers about state and federal investigations engrossing his political operation.
Rather than throw good taxpayer money after bad to drown out the messenger, how about delivering the unimpeachable government the audience paid for.