For the entitled family of mayor wannabe Bill de Blasio, the big and tall champion of big government and bigger taxes, every day of the year was Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Why pay for child care when you can get it for free, and on the public dime?
Several sources have complained to me that when the candidate’s wife and political partner, Chirlane McCray, was a speechwriter for city Comptroller Bill Thompson, the couple’s kids were frequently dropped at Thompson’s executive suite in downtown Manhattan, where the tykes were often looked after by staffers who didn’t feel they had the right to say “no.’’
“This wasn’t a one-time thing where they needed to be parked in the comptroller’s office,’’ said a former staffer. “They were a constant presence.’’ And a disruptive one.
From early 2002 to 2004, when Chirlane moved on to Citigroup — a shift to the 1 percent that curiously does not appear in her bio on de Blasio’s campaign Web site — a pre-Afro Dante, who would have been around 4 at the start, and Chiara, then 6, learned about government from the inside.
While my source, a man, was able to close his office door and tune out “Romper Room,” others weren’t so lucky. “They were in the middle of the office. We would have coloring books for them and such,” said another ex-staffer. “Kids are disruptive.
“They were, to me, cute.”
But cuteness did not appease yet another former staffer, a woman, who moaned to a colleague that baby-sitting duties fell to her when Chirlane was in meetings.
“Other people had kids,’’ said a former employee. “But no one else brought in their children, except on Take Our Kids to Work Day.”
This free baby-sitting by public employees is particularly galling. And not just because de Blasio demonized working parents who employ nannies — often hardworking immigrants who need the work — in an infuriating commercial that ran during the primary campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination, which he won.
“If you live on Park Avenue,” he sneered, “you got everything you need. Nannies and housekeepers.” Now we know why de Blasio didn’t need household help.
The Post reported in August that when Blasio was a city councilman from 2002 to 2009, he also violated the separation of work and baby care, enlisting government-paid peons to round up his kids and drop them at his Brooklyn office. One claimed to have gone to the de Blasio house in tony Park Slope, Brooklyn, to run the personal Nanny State.
But after denying he used staffers to pick up his kids (he insisted he always watched them himself when they came to the office), de Blasio relented.
“There may have been a couple of times in an emergency where a staff member may have stepped in to help,” he said.
De Blasio did not comment for this column. His spokesman, Dan Levitan, did not respond to a call and e-mails.
Asked about the nursery operating out of the comptroller’s office, Thompson said, “No comment.’’
The hypocrisy is stunning. De Blasio, who the latest polls show is crushing Republican candidate Joe Lhota, portrays himself as a man of the people — some of the people.
De Blasio, once a self-described “democratic socialist” who honeymooned illegally in communist Cuba and fixed parking tickets for relatives and constituents, while lately, hilariously, calling himself a “fiscal conservative,” never saw a government program he didn’t like. Or couldn’t benefit from.
Somehow, many of us parents manage to work without the benefit of taxpayer-funded child care. This perfectly illustrates de Blasio’s Tale of Two Cities.
In de Blasioville, well-connected politicians get the breaks.
Mia’s Woody tale truly whack-y
Woody Allen may be the creepiest perv to walk city streets, marrying his girlfriend’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, a gal he once treated as his own kid.
But is the nebbishy filmmaker, who looks as if he hasn’t the body strength to remove the lid from a mayonnaise jar, scary enough to hire a hit man? Mia Farrow thinks so.
More than 20 years after Woody’s epic betrayal, Mia got revenge. She told Vanity Fair magazine that Ronan Farrow, long believed to be Woody and Mia’s biological son, “possibly” was sired by Mia’s conveniently dead former husband, Frank Sinatra.
Mia also told the mag she once feared Allen might try to knock her off.
“I’m afraid he’s going to have me killed — have somebody else do it. He’ll have me run off the road,” Mia remembered saying.
Mia said she confided these fears to an unnamed man, who, like a scene in a bad Woody Allen movie, met her in a gray sedan at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 72nd Street. Mia said the man came calling after she told Sinatra she feared that Allen might try to hurt her because she claimed that Woody had molested their adopted daughter Dylan.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sinatra was said to have replied.
Mia said she told the mystery man in the gray sedan that Allen’s driver on his movies was a Teamster. The driver’s brother-in-law was a confessed murderer!
“Don’t worry about it. We own the Teamsters,” she quoted the man as saying.
So is Woody Allen a big, bad gangster? Or is Mia categorically cuckoo?
For the sake of the kids, Mia, give it a rest.
Family don’t get Jacko
Michael Jackson died skeletally thin, the willing victim of endless plastic surgeries, insisting to the end there was nothing wrong with a grown man who sleeps with small boys.
Jackson’s 2009 demise at age 50 was tragic. But it can’t be blamed on concert promoter AEG Live, which Jackson’s mom and kids sued in LA for up to $2 billion. The jury didn’t give them a dime.
It was the right call.
Jackson died from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol, administered by Dr. Conrad Murray, now doing time for involuntary manslaughter in the death. While jurors agreed that AEG hired Dr. Murray, they didn’t think he was the “incompetent’’ the Jacksons claimed.
Truth is Jackson, who never heard the word “no,’’ would have gotten his hands on the fatal drug from someone else if Dr. Murray had refused. Mom Katherine is likely to appeal the AEG case.
She should let Michael Jackson rest in peace.
$top playing hardball, Cano
Yankee second baseman Robinson Cano made $15 million last season, and now hopes to score a multiyear, $300 million contract as a free agent.
Yet the All-Star pays the Dominican mama of his 3-year-old son a miserly $600 a month in child support (he says he also pays for things like housing and school), which often comes late, she complained to ESPN. She wants $25,000 a month.
He can afford it. Pay up, Daddy.
‘Swing’ and amiss
Robin Thicke’s wife, Paula Patton, told Howard Stern that she and her hub have “done just about everything.’’ Jada Pinkett Smith wrote on Facebook that she and hubby Will Smith “BOTH can do WHATEVER we want.’’ Now, lots of regular folks are emulating Hollywood libertines and carrying on open relationships, The Post reported. Why work when you can have multiple partners of both genders?
I’ll take monogamy.