Mayor Al Sharpton and the Rev. Bill de Blasio — oops, sometimes I get them confused, but that’s my mistake. We have only one mayor at a time and, until further notice, he’s Mayor Sharpton.
The Rev’s reach is on display again, with de Blasio firmly standing by an aide whose boyfriend is a convicted killer and cop hater. Critics warn the mayor he is doing more damage to his already damaged relationship with the NYPD.
They have a point, but they miss the larger one. Far more important to de Blasio is the fact that the aide, Rachel Noerdlinger, is close to Sharpton. And to be close to Sharpton is, in this administration, close to godliness.
Noerdlinger serves as Sharpton’s eyes and ears at City Hall. She recently attended a police CompStat meeting and reportedly joins de Blasio’s daily cabinet meeting. As Mark Green put it in a tweet, she’s with “Rabbi Sharptn.”
That makes Noerdlinger a protected class of one. Formerly Sharpton’s spokesperson, she was hired as chief of staff for first lady Chirlane McCray at the whopping salary of $170,000. She also got a waiver allowing her to continue to live in New Jersey so her teenage son could keep his doctors following two serious accidents.
Her live-in boyfriend there, Hassaun McFarlane, was convicted of manslaughter as a teenager and recently called cops “pigs” on Facebook. And, as The Post reported yesterday, his blog posts tout violent sex and mock black women. He blogs under the handle “stop end frisk,” perhaps a nod to the topic that helped elect Noerdlinger’s boss.
It is tricky business to hold the behavior of a spouse, a child or even a friend against an employee. Noerdlinger, at 43, is entitled to be judged on her own credentials and conduct.
If only that were the de Blasio standard. Instead, he quickly severed his ties with campaign aide Lis Smith after it was revealed she was dating Eliot Spitzer. Pestered with questions about whether his support for Noerdlinger represented a double standard, de Blasio denied it.
“This is a very different situation,” he told reporters.
Technically speaking, he’s right. Spitzer was disgraced and de Blasio owed him nothing. Sharpton’s disgraced, but the mayor owes Sharpton everything, so Noerdlinger stays.
Sharpton, remember, didn’t do the expected and support Bill Thompson, the only black candidate in the 2013 Democratic mayoral primary. De Blasio was the most ardent cop critic in the pack, eagerly put his biracial family front and center, and probably promised Sharpton lots of face time and, just maybe, a patronage job or two. In the end, Sharpton stayed neutral.
As a result, de Blasio and Thompson split the black vote, which allowed de Blasio to squeak past the 40 percent threshold he needed to avoid a runoff.
That history makes clear that the way to understand Noerdlinger’s hiring, her excessive salary, the waiver and the mayor’s willingness to spend political capital defending her is that it has nothing to do with her. It’s all about repaying his debt to Sharpton.
The problem is that no repayment will ever be sufficient. Sharpton is like the Mafia — the more you pay, the more you owe. When you have a debt to him, he owns you.
He publicly humiliated de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton at City Hall; in a normal world, that would be enough to get him exiled. But as the Noerdlinger case shows, the mayor believes he is still so far in hock that he’ll twist and bend and insult the NYPD to keep Sharpton happy.
No mayor can govern on bended knee. This one had better stand up before it’s too late.
Advice & dissent? O, no you don’t!
President Obama’s ridiculous claim that America’s intelligence agencies “underestimated” the strength of the Islamic State never made a whit of sense. There was plenty of public knowledge about what was happening in Syria and Iraq as city after city fell. Even worse, insiders are now telling reporters Obama was warned more than a year ago about the bloodthirsty cult.
I believe that, but I also believe Obama didn’t hear those warnings. He only hears what he wants to hear, and doesn’t take seriously those who disagree with him. As consigliere Valerie Jarrett has said, he’s the smartest man in the room, and other people bore him.
When it comes to terrorism, there is no doubt the president wanted to hear an echo of what he told the country: Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run. He said, “The tide of war is receding,” and vowed to end wars, not start them. He claimed Iraq was stable as he pulled out the final troops in 2011.
That was the party line, and all the yes men and women were expected to repeat it.
From the start, the military brass was on thin ice with him. He openly criticized President George W. Bush in front of them and was suspicious of those who advocated for more troops, believing they were trying to limit his options. He also accused his commanders of leaking to the press to make him look bad.
In his book, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Obama raged to him about military leaders, asking: “Is it a lack of respect for me? . . . Do they resent that I never served in the military? Do they think because I’m young that I don’t see what they’re doing?”
This is not ancient history. Obama now has a plan to defeat the Islamic State that military and intelligence analysts don’t believe will work. But what do they know?
He’s the smartest man in the room. Always.
Aw, poor #$@$ QB
After Geno Smith shouted “F–k you” to a frustrated Jets fan, coach Rex Ryan scolded his quarterback and pronounced him contrite, saying, “It’s a mistake and I don’t think it will happen again to Geno.”
Huh? It didn’t happen “to Geno.” He did it.
Playing the victim only works in politics.
Now we need an advocate advocate
If this is a joke, it’s on taxpayers.
The city’s Department of Finance says it wants to hire a “taxpayer advocate” because so many complaints it gets are legitimate.
“I said to myself, there’s a need to really have an independent body, an independent advocate within the agency,” Commissioner Jacques Jiha told CapitalNewYork.com.
The notion that a single person should be responsible for resolving public complaints would be touching if it weren’t ludicrous. Shouldn’t all city employees have the attitude that they work for the public and are responsible to taxpayers?
Apparently not. As I have noted, city residents have 16 elected officials supposedly representing them, from the president of the United States to their City Council member. Yet only one is called the public advocate.
Whom do the others advocate for?