Tag / New York

by Edward Champion

People with Mental Disabilities Are Not Your Online Playthings

Talented writers are often exploited by media outlets, often at the expense of their own mental health. This practice needs to stop. We need empathy and understanding, not exploitation.

On February 14, 2024, The Cut published an essay by Emily Gould. A few people forwarded it to me — perhaps because of my own checkered history with Gould, a history for which I feel great shame and deep regret about.

Presumably, a few of these people hoped that I would snark it up.

Well, I can’t. It is absolutely impossible for me to do so in any way after reading that essay.

Aside from the fact that Emily Gould is, like all of us, a human being, there’s also this to consider: I did wrong. Significant wrong. Tectonic-plate shifting wrong that has largely (and perhaps rightly) been perceived as unforgivable.

I am not asking for forgiveness. But because I have done wrong, it is my duty and my responsibility to address Gould’s essay. It’s important for people to know and fully understand exactly how the New York media world openly exploits people with mental health issues and how we perceive people on social media through these hideous fishbowls that only intensify the pain that they have to live with. They did it to me. They have done it to so many other people with Everest-sized hearts and stratospheric talent. They’ll continue to do it to others.

Right now they’re doing it to Emily Gould.

And that is absolutely wrong.

I have to put my foot down.

Enough is enough.

It is morally indefensible to leave Emily Gould so open and vulnerable to vituperative comments and attacks that she should not be reading right now.

Emily Gould is a human being who needs help. It’s truly that simple.

I attempted to leave a version of the below essay in the Cut comments, but, rather predictably, the New York Magazine people censored me. I’m honestly not surprised. Online hate is the only currency they have to recoup their investment on whatever vilely picayune amount they paid out to Emily Gould for her essay. This whole business of exploiting someone’s worst demons like this is a deeply sickening and repugnant three-ring circus that only grows worse as so many media outlets cut more jobs.

Here is the goddamned truth. I will not be able to sleep tonight if I don’t say what I have to say — which is probably not what you are going to expect from me. So here goes.

* * *

In 2007, Emily Gould put up a vicious post on Gawker in which she defamed me. I had made a splash as a quirky literary journalist with some reach. I was literally living hand-to-mouth and Gould was savage and merciless, ridiculing me as I was desperately trying to collect a check from a deadbeat editor to buy food. I later learned that Gould had been planting seeds of gossip about me on the literary cocktail party circuit.

Seven years after Gould’s post, I went through a significant mental health crisis that went terribly public. The same thing that’s happening with Gould’s essay. I was unwell, much as Gould here is unwell.

While reading this essay, I misted up several times, recognizing patterns of self-delusion that I believed in when I had my breakdown. You see, when I went through my own mental breakdown, I should not have been writing publicly like some monkey dancing for other people’s amusement in a zoo. At the time, I had the wrong friends, the wrong partner, and the wrong support group. I should have removed myself entirely from the media/literary circuit and asked for help and forgiveness. I did not do that. Instead, I went full-bore self-destructive, much like Gould here. That’s the great cruelty of mental illness: you truly and stupidly believe that you are invincible and you often refuse to acknowledge your own wrongs. Even when you are unknowingly and uncontrollably hurting people. (I feel so bad for Keith and the kids.)

I wrote an extremely vicious and completely unacceptable article about Gould that I still feel great shame about to this very day, that I again apologize for, and that I wish that I had never published. This piece was seized upon by the very rumormongering crowd that Gould ran with. It only served to exacerbate my crisis and erode the good will and high caliber offerings that I had spent years building up. When I returned with my podcast in an attempt to “reclaim” myself (like Gould here), Gould helped lead a hateful campaign against me and, in a now deleted tweet, expressed her great hope that I would kill myself. And it helped to push me over the edge, leading to an uncontrolled drinking binge, a suicide attempt, my hospitalization, six months of homelessness, and a long article with a substantial number of completely untrue and unverified stories about me that I still have to answer to nearly ten years later. Anyone who knows me in the real world knows who I am. Anyone who has never met me believes I am something else: a cartoonish villain that has been created by the media industrial complex. I am absolutely certain that there is a similar disparity between the Real Emily and the Media Emily. And I was absolutely wrong to perpetuate any notion of Emily Gould as a cartoon.

I have read Emily Gould’s essay three times. As someone who has been through the wringer and who has cleaned himself up, I am asking all of you to back off here. Please do not speculate. Please do not condemn. Please do not judge. You do not know Emily Gould anymore than I do. This is only going to make things worse for Gould, her family, and her friends.

Empathy. That’s what I’m calling for. Gould has the same problem I had: spill all your problems into a major public forum, get attention, but never entirely address the true underlying problems.

Emily, if you’re reading this, I urge you — as a fellow depressive who has no ill will towards you, who forgives you, and who apologizes for any harm I have caused — to keep your demons private and to not allow any editor to exploit your pain and depression for mercantile gain. And if you think you can’t do it, I’m telling you that you can. I got off heavy drinking. I got off cigarettes. And I was highly accomplished at both of those forms of slow suicide. I’m now in a happy relationship and I am a father figure to two lovely kids. And that matters more than any “fame” I once had or any infamy I now possess in spurts. Live. Be humble and grateful. Take care of yourself. That’s more important than being a writer. I urge you from the bottom of my heart to live the best and most peaceful life you can. We only go around this merry-go-round once and you, like anyone, deserve the best ride imaginable.

2/14/24 PM UPDATE: The exploitation of Emily Gould’s mental disability for financial gain appears to be much bigger than I initially estimated. Publishers Lunch reports that Gould will apparently be publishing a book version of her bipolar year with Avid Reader Press. Presumably, the essay featured in The Cut serves as a precursor. Gould’s original Twitter account was suspended — for reasons unknown. But she is still going strong with a Twitter account sanctioned by New York Magazine.

2/15/24 UPDATE: While I quietly unpublished my 2014 essay about Emily Gould (and its attendant comments) last night, my understanding is that some people are still able to access it through a Google cache. I respectfully request that you do not read it or track it down. There is no reason to cause any of the parties further pain or grief. Let me be clear: I fully renounce the ugly words that I wrote in 2014. It was a colossal mistake and I again sincerely apologize to anyone who I had ever hurt. Thank you.

by Edward Champion

Rosezetta Russell, Unhinged and Abusive Tyrant at the New York Department of Health

In which my hard work at a regular gig is kiboshed by a wildly abusive and unhinged supervisor who lives to scream at people.

For the past several months, I have been privileged to work at vaccination centers in various parts of New York City — predominantly at the Aqueduct Racetrack. I was the guy who logged in patients before they got vaccinated. In the early stages of the vaccination process, when the Racetrack was very busy, the table that I would be assigned to would regularly do 5% of the daily numbers (this when there were 25 tables) and a day in which we did 200+ vaccinations was not uncommon. I am a supremely hard worker, but I regularly cracked jokes, kept up a level of Ted Lasso-style positivism and bonhomie, and even danced at times to entertain the patients (as well as my co-workers and the National Guard) and put them at ease. I treated every patient like a special human being, remarking favorably on what they were wearing and relating to them with my charm, my wit, and my social skills. I got many of them to laugh and to feel less nervous and, in some cases, to feel genuinely excited about the prospect of being vaccinated. Largely because I knew that the decision to get vaccinated was an emotionally fraught one. So I tried to do everything in my power to make patients feel as comfortable as possible. In short, I turned them around. I uplifted them. I did so because I very much believed in the noble goal of vaccinating as many New Yorkers as possible.  New York has been very good to me. And I wanted to give back. Because I believe in science. And I remain passionately and resolutely aligned with the mandate and spirit of New York State.  I would often encourage patients to bring in their friends.  And, for this, I was a lively and entertaining draw among the other nurses, the doctors, and Yamil Spreight-Miller — the excellent former head of that site who looked out for patients and staff alike.  Yamil was a top-notch supervisor who ran the Aqueduct like a champ and who took an interest in everyone and who genuinely cared about the work.  I cannot offer enough plaudits about Yamil.

To offer Miss Russell some benefit of the doubt, it’s certainly true that I am an eccentric and exuberant man. Someone who offers quirky energy and heartfelt empathy to help make any job or unpleasant task endurable. As supervisor, Miss Russell is certainly within her rights to deny me work if I don’t fit her exacting standards — never once vocalized to me or anyone — of what it is to be a flow coordinator. But I cannot be anybody other than me. And my track record has abundantly demonstrated that my approach has not been a disastrous one; if anything, quite the reverse.

I was recently called back to serve as scribe.  And today I learned that Yamil had been replaced by Rosezetta Russell, who regrettably seemed to speak in one harsh language rather than three beautiful tongues.  While I love all the people who work at the Racetrack (and they, in turn, were happy to see me back) and I have greatly enjoyed the job and cheering patients up with jokes, vivacity, and positivism, the new supervisor Rosezetta Russell is an abusive, disrespectful, needlessly abrasive, and incredibly rude person who screams at everyone and berates all. 

This afternoon, I was even screamed at (over a microphone) by Miss Russell for no reason at all — as I was attending to a patient (Miss Russell’s behavior was wildly unprofessional and the poor patient — who I believe had PTSD — was already nervous enough about getting his booster shot; Miss Russell’s unhinged verbal assault on me (and, by extension, the patient) made it very difficult for me to do my job) — this when my lunch break was delayed and my blood sugar was low. But I still kept my cool and stayed calm and professional.

Nobody at the site likes Miss Russell.  I cannot understate this.  I had no idea how unhinged she was, but the anecdotes and stories about her are legion. And when she went after me (the “new” guy who had actually been working at the site for a long time), many of my co-workers — including some of the National Guard — checked in to make sure that I was okay.  And they filled me in on Miss Russell’s long history of screaming at and berating workers at the site.  It is my understanding that one nurse left today because of Miss Russell’s obscene antics. It is also my understanding that scribes and vaccinators alike are leaving the site in droves. It is not because they don’t want to work. It is because Miss Russell is a pusillanimous and castigating bully who does not value anyone. While a certain amount of unusual behavior comes with the territory for a job like this (the shifts are long; the breaks are few), the idea that anyone working a twelve hour shift would be subjected to toxic and uncontrolled madness is beyond the pale.

I make it a point of pride to work very hard, stay positive and in good humor, and to treat everyone around me with dignity. (In my early days at the Aqueduct, I would often initiate mock competitive races with other tables to see who could get the most numbers. This resulted in many of my fellow colleagues excelling at their job.) Miss Russell, by contrast, lives to scream at people and to treat them like dirt.  She is a vicious narcissistic tyrant without a shred of empathy. I suspect that she has kept her $79,000/year job for fifteen years at the Department of Health because she is regularly moved around and her supervisors probably figure that any havoc she unleashes at one site will be resolved by her inevitable reassignment. Since many of our patients today were getting booster shots, and I was working at one of only two tables who were handling this, I gently made the suggestion to Miss Russell that we should open up a third table to accommodate a patient influx.  It was a pragmatic idea designed not only to alleviate a scenario in which we could be faced with dozens of patients walking in at one time, but a remedy that would also allow the labor to spread among numerous tables. Miss Russell took my benign suggestion as casus belli.  For this, I was screamed at and berated by Miss Russell.  And I have just learned from the agency that my shifts for this week have been canceled and that I am no longer welcome at the Aqueduct Racetrack.

I understand that the Aqueduct is having difficulty filling up shifts these days.  And that is because of Miss Russell’s toxic behavior, which is driving many good people away.  The people who work the Aqueduct genuinely care about patients and their job.  They work passionately and ardently to sustain a smooth workflow and a friendly camaraderie with patients.

Now something that I very much enjoyed doing in the name of public service has been taken away from me because Miss Russell — a joyless and needlessly irascible bully — apparently despised me — a positive and easygoing man who, for all of his unusual manner, tends to get along with people — because she simply doesn’t possess basic social skills and she resents anyone who can make other people laugh or feel at ease under circumstances that are often difficult for people. Or perhaps because she operates from some unbalanced impulse to demean everyone who surrounds her. Misery, as the old saying goes, loves company.

I am not someone who stays silent when I am abused and disrespected — especially when there is no logical justification. Miss Russsell took one look at me and decided that our relationship would be founded on instant hatred. She has done this with many others. I have sent an email to the Department of Health, asking them if this the kind of vilifying figure who they want to have spearheading a vital vaccination hub.  I can tell you this much. If I screamed at people in the way that Miss Russell regularly bellows at staffers at the Aqueduct, then nobody would want to work with me. And rightly so.  I would never think to treat any co-worker with such wanton disrespect. But the good people who work the Aqueduct stay silent because they believe in the greater mission of vaccination.

I am putting this essay out into the universe to warn people about Rosezetta Russell’s alarmingly toxic and unhinged behavior, to hope (likely in vain) that her bullying will be mollified or corrected by anyone in Albany (do they even exist?) who comprehends that this is no way to run an operation. No professional should act this way. And nobody in charge of an essential vaccination center should be screaming at the hard-working people who work long hours to keep it running.

by Edward Champion

Congratulations, de Blasio, You Played Yourself

In which an obstinate Mayor attempts to defy the very forces of nature and further cements his dubious legacy.

On Saturday night, Mayor Bill de Blasio looked upward into the heavens, denying the existence of heavy rain, thunder, lightning, and all the other meterological accoutrements that tend to arrive with a Category 1 hurricane, and declared that his Central Park concert — his great plan to “reopen” New York City — would go on. He carried on with the intransigent gusto of a Flat Earther and the obstinacy of a hopeless fool.

The crowd, as chronicled by City & State reporter Jeff Coltin, was confused. A pink LED screen telegraphed clear safety language urging the crowd to move quickly and calmly to the exits. Then, after the majority of the crowd departed the area, the Mayor himself leaped on stage a mere eight minutes after the safety announcements and declared, in his booming voice, “We want to bring the concert back. Listen to me. We want to bring it back. We need everyone for a brief period of time move to someplace safe because of thunder and lightning. And then we’re going to bring the concert back. For your safety…Move to somewhere indoors briefly nearby. We’re going to get you an update shortly. We hope to bring it back shortly and finish the whole show. Okay? Get someplace safe right now.”

There was, of course, no area that was “somewhere indoors” anywhere close to the Great Lawn, the location of de Blasio’s “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert.” There were, however, plenty of trees. Magnets for lightning.

As Coltin observed, some people had waited in line for two and a half hours to get into the show. Most did not wear masks. Setting aside the reckless gamble that de Blasio had made with the delta variant by instituting a lax entry policy (attendees were only required to have one dose of the two shot vaccine), it was rather astonishing that he had decided to take on an equally irresponsible risk with Hurricane Henri.

Then after de Blasio’s volte-face, an official voice emerged over the speakers announcing that the event was canceled.

There was never a contingency plan for this concert — despite significant advance notice about the hurricane.

Bill de Blasio has been a largely ridiculous Mayor throughout the last eight years. His clown car escapades have included a risible run as President, an unpardonable pizza solecism, in which he ate a slice with a knife and fork, and his remarkably idiotic call for New Yorkers to “go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus” in March 2020.

If there’s one thing that unites New Yorkers, left and right, it is their universal hatred of Bill de Blasio. (To add insult to incompetence, de Blasio was also loudly booed tonight at the concert. The only other jeer came when Staten Island was mentioned. I put forth the reasonable proposition that when you are belittled with the same enmity meted out to New York’s least respected borough, you have probably failed at your job.)

De Blasio was undoubtedly riding high after his longtime enemy, Governor Andrew Cuomo, went down in flames and was forced to resign in the wake of numerous allegations of sexual harassment. But de Blasio somehow did what no other New York Mayor, not even David Dinkins, has done: he played himself.

by Edward Champion

Can WNYC’s Toxic Work Culture Be Cured?

Instead of living up to its vital duties as a local center for news and innovation, under the inept leadership of Audrey Cooper, WNYC has transformed into a Game of Thrones hellscape where rolling heads, constant standoffs, and kangaroo courts are now the norm.

Ben Smith’s May 23rd column in the New York Times has painted a juicy yet troubling portrait of a flagship public radio station grappling with some serious Game of Thrones vibes. Hubris-fueled superstar hosts have been peremptorily shitcanned and accused of throwing pity parties. Faceless producers who toil long hours have been significantly mistreated. The human resources department has become WNYC’s answer to the small council of Seven Kingdoms, with complaints begetting further complaints and radio veteran Fred Mogul serving as public radio’s Tyrion Lannister. A sacrificial lamb in a kangaroo court.

Despite the fact that it’s a common practice among journalists to use and attribute Associated Press copy to flesh out a story — particularly when they are staring into the barrel of an intense deadline — Mogul, an eighteen-year veteran who was never properly investigated, was ratted out by an editor and fired by Audrey Cooper, WNYC’s editor-in-chief since last July.

Cooper, a white woman who was hired despite repeated calls for diversity, is the Cersei Lannister of 160 Varick. Embarrassingly, Cooper had scant knowledge of New York public radio before accepting the job. In Smith’s column, one gets the sense not so much of an experienced professional who once led a newsroom, but of a nervous grad student doing a lot of late-night cribbing in a dorm room subsumed with fumes from the bong. Her lack of transparency in relation to Mogul’s firing to Smith, complete with her touchy-feely West Coast bromides (“It’s totally OK to be sad.”) in response to an inequitable fall of the axe, hasn’t inspired confidence. But it did result in a complaint on Sunday, filed by the WNYC union, from the National Labor Relations Board, which accused Cooper of waging a “coordinated and aggressive campaign” against internal critics. When you’re less than a year into your job, and you’ve failed to quell preventable conflicts, one must rightfully ask how the person in charge fell upward. And then one recalls the hideous legacy of Gaius Caligula.

Bob Garfield — the co-host of On the Media — was also perp walked to the chopping block. We may never know the full reasons for why he went aggro. But it was a paradigm-shifting moment that, whatever your feelings for Garfield, truly stunned most WNYC listeners. It appears that The Takeaway‘s Tanzina Vega could be next. Because stress levels are high at WNYC thanks to the pandemic, any once pardonable reaction to unprecedented working conditions can now now categorized as “abuse” or “bullying” by a nimble underling hoping to stab his way to a less thankless position. Even Radiolab, once among WNYC’s crown jewels, has been ravening for a breakout episode after a shaky and awkward host reshuffling following Robert Krulwich’s retirement. Adding insult to self-injury, WNYC has also failed to acknowledge diversity — both among its staff and in its coverage. Back in 2018, Gothamist was bought by WNYC. But Cooper has proven to be so tone-deaf about New York voice that she has even ordered Gothamist‘s reporters to be less critical of the New York Police Department, failing to understand that Gothamist has, in many vital ways, filled the shoes of the long departed Village Voice.

When Cooper was announced for the editor-in-chief gig, the New York Public Radio press release announced that she would be “a change agent with a track record of modernizing a newsroom’s staff to make it more representative of the community it serves and make it work in new ways to serve that community.” Cooper initially did not understand why universally loved morning show host Brian Lehrer was popular. But when you read the word “modernizing” in any press release, it’s usually code for ridding an operation of its more experienced old school innovators. Among the fourteen staffers led to the guillotine in late April were people who weren’t afraid to take a stand: All Things Considered producer Richard Yeh, Allie Yeh (thankfully now working on a project with Kaitlin Priest), and veteran Gothamist journalists John Del Signore and Christopher Robbins.

It’s also clear that the long-running scabs from recent years (sexual harassment and abuse allegations from Leonard Lopate, John Hockenberry, and Jonathan Schwartz — all fired) have been roughly and abrasively ripped off. Under Cooper’s failed leadership, WNYC is bleeding more profusely than the Red Wedding guest list. Without a significant course correct — and this appears increasingly unlikely to occur under Cooper — one wonders if WNYC can even be healed at all.

by Edward Champion

Robert Carroll: Brooklyn’s Scumbag Scrooge

State Assemblyman Robert Carroll has proposed one of the most unjust tax schemes that New York State has seen in sometime. A $3 delivery surcharge would needlessly penalize struggling families, the disabled, the elderly, and anybody else in New York who is hanging on by a thread.

I’ve spent the last two days trying to tame a great rage I have towards an entitled millennial New York State Assemblyman named Robert Carroll — or “Bobby4Brooklyn,” as this clueless asshat likes to call himself on Twitter. (Sorry, Bobby, but styling your handle like the title of a Prince song doesn’t make you any less whiter.) But I cannot find it within my heart to stifle my indignation towards a remarkably insensitive and entitled dickhead who clearly does not recognize the struggles of people with disabilities, economically disadvantaged New Yorkers who are hanging by a thread for dear life, and the elderly, who are often barely getting by on social security and pensions. Carroll has proposed one of the cruelest and most poorly devised bills I’ve observed in some time. And this dimwitted weasel has the effrontery to call himself a Working Families Party candidate!

In the middle of a pandemic, as many people have been forced to stay indoors and remain socially isolated and thus order packages to get what they need, Carroll has had the audacity to propose a $3 surcharge for any delivery in New York City. The bill — specifically, A06078 — does provide an exception for “essential medical supplies, food deliveries and for those using supplemental nutrition assistance program, special supplemental nutrition for women, infants and children and any other successor program,” but this still leaves a woefully gargantuan set of essential items that will still cause the underprivileged to pay up. Got a deal on a winter coat? Pay $3. Or how about some household goods you need to keep your home in tidy shape? Pay $3. Need a specialized tool for your job that you can’t get elsewhere? Pay $3. Your landlord won’t fix the radiator and you need a heater to stay warm in the winter? Pay $3.

You may be thinking, “Well, $3. That’s not that big of a deal.” Well, how many times have you been forced to order something online when it isn’t available in the store? Or when you’ve feared braving the teeming throngs of people crowding a supermarket? Moreover, if Amazon decides to split up your delivery across multiple packages, would you have to pay $3 for each separate delivery? That would seem to be the case based on the language of the bill. You could easily pay $12 if the algorithm decided to split up a bulk purchase into four separate deliveries. And for many people struggling in New York, $12 could mean the difference between paying this month’s electricity bill or playing Russian roulette with Con Ed, hoping that they won’t shut the lights off after months of falling behind on the payments.

This bill is also a slap in the face to small businesses, who are often forced to shell out for UPS and FedEx in an effort to keep their customers happy and fend off the big online behemoths. Amazon has succeeded in undercutting small businesses by pricing down goods at a reduced profit margin. The cash-strapped New Yorker is often forced to go with the cheaper deal. But what if that $3 surcharge — theoretically on every item — is simply too much for someone looking for loose change under the couch to stay alive? Well, they may go to the retail stores. They could clog the parking lots, creating the very congestion that Carroll, in his infinite imperiousness, claims to be fighting.

Our fundamental goal here in New York is to prevent people from socially congregating as much as possible. According to the Washington Post, social gatherings are leading the COVID spread. The spread has been so disastrous that Governor Cuomo was forced to cap social gatherings at ten people. Moreover, in an age in which three dollars is the new thirty dollars, Carroll’s bill is a repugnant war on the working class. All the funds generated by this would go to bailing out the MTA — which, not to put too fine a point on it, hasn’t exactly been known for its financial scrupulousness. Disabled people — who rely on deliveries in order to survive and who cannot use the subway easily due to the fact that only 77% of stations are accessible — are now being asked to bear the financial brunt of a public transportation service that has declared itself enemy to their mobility. And what about the immunocompromised? Surely, it’s an unfair financial burden on them as well.

Carroll clearly hasn’t thought out these obvious drawbacks to his bill. The $300 million he hopes to generate annually from a bill aimed at regular people would be a drop in the bucket for Amazon, which Carroll hasn’t targeted and which made $96.1 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2020. If you asked Amazon to pick up the $30 million tab, that would be .3% of just one quarter of revenue. For the struggling New Yorker who has only $90 to buy an $89 winter coat, that would mean a $92 bill that he could not pay.

Robert Carroll is, in short, a heartless Scrooge for even considering this punitive scheme. He has received righteous pushback on Twitter and is too much of a cowardly Jacob Frey type to man up and address the criticism and walk back the bill. Since social media opened up a glorious can of whoop-ass on Carroll and his foolish and unjust bill, Carroll has tried to mask his assault on the working class by aligning himself with a “tax the rich” campaign and hypocritically stumping against state pension dollars divested to gas an doil.

Well, it won’t work, Bobby. We now know that you’re an enemy of the people. We know that you’re a Scrooge and that you’re actively contributing to undermining public health during a pandemic.

If Carroll manages to pass this bill, here is my promise. I will put my energies into supporting any 44th District candidate who will primary him. I will knock on doors to expose this charlatan and tilt votes. I will do everything in my power to ensure that Carroll loses his seat.

Asking the people — especially disabled people who cannot use the subway — to take a tax hit for a corrupt and bloated agency that requires significant reform is an unconscionable and morally unjust act. You surrender any right to call yourself a defender of the people when this bill is your “big idea.”

So what’s it going to be, Bobby? Are you going to walk this vile bill back and admit that you did not think this thing through? As a man of Brooklyn, I will be the first person to defend you if you do so.

Or will you continue to remain smug and stubborn? Will you continue to believe that you know what’s best for the people of Brooklyn? If that’s the case, I’ll be happy to volunteer my time and energy to become a significant factor to ending your political career with a sizable turnout in the next election.

The choice, Bobby, is yours.