BOYCOTT THE POST!

I am cancelling my subscription to the New York Post. This is not easy for me. I’ve been a subscriber for years.

I admit I like to keep up with the dirt on Page Six, I used to follow Patrick Walker’s horoscope, and most importantly, they have the best sports section in New York. I like most of their sports writers, particularly the literate and intelligent Mike Vaccaro, and I especially enjoy Phil Mushnick, who polices the large, powerful and often flawed and amoral sports media, particularly television and radio, with a keen eye and ear and a genuine ethical point of view. I especially enjoy him on Tuesday when he’s most outraged by the awful crew that blabs all over Monday night football—the egomaniacal ex-coach Jon Gruden and former mediocre NFL QB and all around tool Ron Jaworski, whom Gruden refers as “Jaws” and who recently said “shit” on air.

Mushnick has a great record of dealing with greedy companies seeking to exploit poor youth with their slave made luxury sneakers and he’s always good, especially on the subject of the stentorian public oaf of New York sports Mike Francesca.
Yes, I would miss Mushnick much, but I can read him on line and then I won’t have to look at the cover of this egregious ragloid which is now on a campaign exhorting Mayor Bloomberg to evict Occupy Wall Street. On Thursday, November 3rd it was: “TIME TO THROW THE BUMS OUT.” On Friday the headline was “Occupy Wall street animals go wild… ZOO-COTTI!” Inside there was hardly a mention of the New York Times’ lead story, how ex-Jersey governor John Corzine fought hard against regulations that might have prevented his firm MF Global from misplacing some $630 million of its customer’s funds. Instead they reported on arrests for blocking the entrance to Corzine’s old firm, Goldman Sachs.

The New York Post, pining for the iron fist and combedover determination of Rudy Giuliani, will not stop Occupy Wall Street. Even if, like their Murdoch counterparts abroad, they hack into every cellphone they can. Yes, I will miss the Post in a way. It is sort of Pop Art in it’s campy, old-school way—like Andy Warhol’s “Tunafish Disaster” painting. And who doesn’t find guilty pleasure in reading about whether or not the commercial copies of Kim Kardashian’s 3 wedding gowns will prove to be bad luck to purchasers. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and I’m boycotting the Post until they stop exhorting the police to manhandle righteous and peaceful demonstrators, and maybe until they send their attack dog Andrea Peyser down to physically wrestle Occupy Wall Street into submission.
It’s quite amazing that Occupy Wall Street is still going strong as it is about to end it’s seventh week. Some say that’s it’s losing energy, and it won’t be long before cold weather shuts it down—even though it survived a freak blizzard that knocked out power for a week in surrounding areas. Occupation has certainly been effective, but it’s not the only game in town. While I’d love to b e writing this from Zuccotti Park, as a breadwinner I am not available for occupations. I am available, however, for marching, chanting, cocktails and flash mobs.
There is a certain charm in a mobile occupation, especially when confronted by police who may, like the New York Post, consider you animals. We should be open to options. The Arab Spring movements involved a certain amount of occupation of public areas, but they also showed the ability to mobilize and disperse like good old flash mobs of bicyclists or dancers who have delighted and annoyed cities periodically, mostly for purposes of fun and Dadaism.

What good are things is a Blackberry, an iPhone, a Twitter or Facebook account if you don’t get creative with them and overthrow the government? While I certainly wouldn’t suggest that Americans follow the example of police-harrassed unemployed British youth who looted up a storm in August, their group mobility and evanescence was fantastically effective. I also liked the hoodie fashion look.

Here’s my new Blue Marlin hoodie, dedicated to the Irish victims of financial shenanigans by multinational conglomerates. By the way, that’s not a Molotov cocktail but a bottle of Irish single malt. I lost the cap.