New York on the Eve...
New York. The Greatest of American cities; the most dubiously American of American cities.
New York. Sitting out the bulk of the founding Revolution a ramshackle encampment for the British.
New York. During the Civil War, the scene of the North's most virulent anti-Union riots and racial pogroms.
New York. Corrupt, devious and energetic; so perfected under its Tammany ward bosses it later taught its younger sister Chicago how to place the dead on the voter rolls.
New York: the Liberal, the Anarchistic, the Mercenary, the Europhilic, the Slick, the Urbane, the Profane, now to play host to the Republican National Convention, that quadrennial party of and by and for the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt (Teddy) and Reagan and Bush pere and -- W.
It's Sunday. The convention does not start until tomorrow. We've already had naked nutcases in Herald Square, rappelling radicals climbing the Plaza and (I'm sorry, this one is just unconscionably wicked) bushels of golf balls cast under-hoof to unstring innocent police horses.
Well, it is for just such that America mobilized after 9/11 to save itself and its own. And, somehow, do we not today cherish even our wackiest of domestic wackos, knowing how beleaguered our open nation stands by sly and resourceful homicidals from afar?
Many are advocating that workers avoid the city entirely: take the week off, get the hell out. How luxurious for those who can. And how utterly feckless.
I will be in Manhattan, and would be nowhere else. Frankly, I don't expect to see the rhythms as altered as is predicted. Likely, advance hoopla has overrun reality.
But, then again, it may be interesting.
New York. Sitting out the bulk of the founding Revolution a ramshackle encampment for the British.
New York. During the Civil War, the scene of the North's most virulent anti-Union riots and racial pogroms.
New York. Corrupt, devious and energetic; so perfected under its Tammany ward bosses it later taught its younger sister Chicago how to place the dead on the voter rolls.
New York: the Liberal, the Anarchistic, the Mercenary, the Europhilic, the Slick, the Urbane, the Profane, now to play host to the Republican National Convention, that quadrennial party of and by and for the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt (Teddy) and Reagan and Bush pere and -- W.
It's Sunday. The convention does not start until tomorrow. We've already had naked nutcases in Herald Square, rappelling radicals climbing the Plaza and (I'm sorry, this one is just unconscionably wicked) bushels of golf balls cast under-hoof to unstring innocent police horses.
Well, it is for just such that America mobilized after 9/11 to save itself and its own. And, somehow, do we not today cherish even our wackiest of domestic wackos, knowing how beleaguered our open nation stands by sly and resourceful homicidals from afar?
Many are advocating that workers avoid the city entirely: take the week off, get the hell out. How luxurious for those who can. And how utterly feckless.
I will be in Manhattan, and would be nowhere else. Frankly, I don't expect to see the rhythms as altered as is predicted. Likely, advance hoopla has overrun reality.
But, then again, it may be interesting.
posted by Chet G @ 4:48 PM
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