I’ve been reading this article about Eric Adams and it’s making my blood boil, so I thought I’d share some of the heat: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/11/eric-adams-nyc-mayor-profile-00016106
The contradictions of man are many, and Eric Adams has more than most. These mysteries of the self, whatever they might mean to the 8.8 million people of his city, however much they might fascinate or confuse, frustrate or delight, do not trouble the mind of the mayor. They might invite further self-reflection, a private moment to journal or meditate, but these contradictions are not problems to fix or sort out. They simply are. When you believe, as Eric Adams does, that your mind can create its own personal reality at a subatomic quantum level, then endless versions of the self can and do exist within any given moment in time.
Ugh
He buys a bag of fresh spinach and a single mango, then falls in step with the march of commuters around him, heading for the downtown express train — because, as he often says, “You can’t be a good shepherd if you’re not among the sheep.”
Oh I hate him so much – he’s calling us sheep!
To spend time in Eric Adams’ reality is to encounter many such metaphors: Crises can either be burials or plantings. Crime is a sea of violence, flowing from many rivers, all of which must be dammed. Children are slipping through the system, falling into raging waters, floating downstream. The solutions need to be upstream solutions.
But the sheep — the sheep hold special resonance. John 10:14 says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” Eric Adams, a Christian who collects Buddhist statuettes, says, “I am one of you. I get it.” In the Bible, the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. In New York, there are a lot of sheep. One night at Gracie Mansion, Adams was wrestling with this — not the responsibility of it, but a paradox he felt within.
Oh great, it’s a religious reference where he’s in the role of god.
But the mayor has national ambitions, too, though they are not as easily defined as, say, a presidential run, or an ideological crusade. Instead, he wants the party to free itself of litmus tests, lanes and labels.
No more policy, no more reform, no more progress, just politicians wheeling and dealing and trying to grab whatever they can that isn’t nailed down – the Adams guarantee!
Adams wanted to write a book for worried parents based on what he’d learned as a police captain. By the time Don’t Let It Happen went on sale in 2009, Adams was a member of the New York state senate, on his way to the borough president’s office and City Hall. But the book wasn’t about politics or policy. It was granular and literal — his own step-by-step guide to, among other things, snooping on your kids.
Adams tip No. 1: Conduct routine weekly searches for drugs in your home. Conduct these searches slowly and methodically. Search CD cases, hollowed-out books, garbage bags, shoes, bedding, vases, plants, picture frames, magazines. Be creative. “Move counter-clockwise.”
Adams tip No. 2: Do not underestimate beer as a driver of alcohol abuse. “Simply put, you can get drunk on beer!” Purchase a portable CheckMan breathalyzer.
Adams tip No. 3: Spot members of a gang by how they style their clothes and hair: Look for oversized white t-shirts, oversized Dickie pants and women in heavy makeup.
Yikes
In February, 40 days into his term, he wrote a speech about Jayquan McKenley, an 18-year-old rap artist who lost his life to gun violence in Brooklyn. The speech was about the system that “failed” McKenley, but it led Adams to explore the social media-driven world of “drill rap,” where posts have “bled out into violent real-world confrontations,” he said. He told reporters he had spoken about drill rap with his son, Jordan Coleman, a 26-year-old filmmaker and artist, and floated the idea of banning it altogether, much as Twitter had banned Donald Trump “because of what he was spewing.”
Except Coleman and his dad never discussed McKenley. Jordan had shown his dad videos of another drill rapper, Pop Smoke, back in 2019. “I’m like, ‘Dude! That was three years ago,’” Coleman told me. “You cannot ban a genre of music, Dad!” Soon after, rappers expressed alarm at a mayor threatening to eliminate (as if he had the power to do so) an entire form of music.
At least we can be confident Adams won’t try to ban any genres of music his son is a personal fan of.
When the mayoral field started to take shape last year, [de Blasio] saw Adams as the only clear choice. And behind the scenes, he made his preference known. “I did try to help him everywhere I could in the primary,” de Blasio told me.
Well at least he’s got the de Blasio seal of approval…
[Adams] learned that New York sits on a store of rare gems and stones, and believes that as a result, “there’s a special energy that comes from here.” On his right wrist he wears a pair of multi-colored energy stone bracelets. He has read several books by Joe Dispenza, a neuroscientist and faculty member at Honolulu’s Quantum University whose bestseller, Becoming Supernatural, teaches that we can transform our physical and emotional state through the teachings of quantum physics. “If you were to take your attention off your life or get beyond the memory of your life,” Dispenza writes, “your life should turn into possibility.” On stage with Adams on election night was another Quantum University faculty member, Bindu Babu, an integrative medicine practitioner and reiki instructor whom Adams appointed to his health transition team in December.
Oh my god
During his campaign, Adams came to Zero Bond as a guest of Ronn Torossian, an aggressive PR executive whose past clients include the Eric Trump Foundation and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and who lied about running a trade news site that bashed other PR firms while praising his own, until a report from veteran media reporter Keith J. Kelly prompted him to admit it.
Fun, fun
The appeal of Eric Adams, first as a candidate, now as mayor, is built on that fleeting quality known as confidence — confidence in himself, in telling his story, in being unapologetic about what he wants to do, how he wants to do it, and who he wants to do it with, whether it fits your lanes and labels or not.
One might even call him a “confidence man”
Adams has an agenda, but he also has a way of asking people to stand with him because of who he is, as opposed to what he wants to do. And it’s made him popular. He is fun to watch. He is always popping up at bars, at fires, at crime scenes, at Broadway openings. He loves being mayor. He is always smiling. In a pandemic, in a city still on its heels, a smile has power.
There’s a story about that smile Adams has told before.
Sometimes, when he got in trouble as a young kid, Adams would look at his mom, who passed away months before she got to see her son inaugurated as mayor, and he would flash her a smile. And his mother would see that smile and say to her son, “How could I discipline you?”
Our latest killer clown in political leadership. It’s going to be a long 4-8 years in NYC.
quite likely blog 