WHOA, MAN: An ad in yesterday’s New York Times, doctored to make Mayor Bloomberg into a nanny, was paid for by a DC nonprofit. (
)
It’s Nanny Bloomberg like you’ve never seen him before.
Hizzoner looked more like Mrs. Doubtfire than a titan of industry and government — gussied up in a frumpy lavender dress with ill-fitting shoulder pads, a matching scarf and a silver locket — in a Photoshopped, full-page ad in The New York Times yesterday.
“You only thought you lived in the land of the free,” the page A5 ad reads, attacking the mayor’s proposed ban on super-sized sugary drinks unveiled last week. “What’s next? Limits on the width of a pizza slice, size of a hamburger or amount of cream cheese on your bagel?”
The ad was paid for by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit backed by the food and restaurant industries that does not disclose its corporate donors.
“It says an awful lot about the state of the soda industry that a tobacco company front group is attacking Mike Bloomberg on their behalf,” said City Hall spokesman Marc LaVorgna. “This is the same organization that was founded to oppose bans of smoking in restaurants and bars.”
Consumer Freedom formed in 1995 with the financial backing of Philip Morris. Besides lobbying against municipal smoking bans in restaurants, it fights government efforts to restrict food and beverage choices.
In the past, the group has received money from Coca-Cola and Wendy’s, according to published reports. The group claims its mission is to provide “research and education.”
Consumer Freedom even bashes PETA, claiming in high-profile campaigns that the group kills animals by supporting euthanasia programs, and slows down breast-cancer research by fighting to end medical testing on lab rats.
Executive director Richard Berman told The Post his group has a “broad base of support” and that the ad was not paid for by the soft-drink industry, but said. “We get a lot of our support from a variety of industries — restaurants are our biggest, historically.” He would not say how much he shelled out for the ad.
“The ad is typical of what we do, which is to point out hypocrisy, or overreaching and junk science,” Berman told The Post. “This is the first time I’ve seen anyone trying to control consumers’ choices by making it illegal to order a larger size of anything.
“This seemed to be the ultimate nanny move.”
Berman said the unflattering Photoshop of the mayor in drag was not punching below the belt.
“People appreciate the humor, and it’s properly targeted,” he said.