Friday, September 18, 2009

No Surprises Here

Surprising absolutely no one, NYC Mayor and mayoral candidate Mike Bloomberg sent out a mailing (approximately the ten thousandth I've received) hitting newly nominated mayoral candidate Bill Thompson over their compared education records. I got the flyer in my mail on Wednesday, which is pretty impressive when you consider that Thompson didn't win the primary until late Tuesday night. Maybe the mail will run better if Bloomberg is re-re-elected.

The flyer doesn't go in much for subtlety. On the top in huge red letters it says "On Education: The Choice Is Clear." Then there's a T-chart showing Mike Bloomberg's record as mayor compared to Bill Thompson's record as president of the board of education. Unsurprisingly (this is campaign lit after all), Bloomberg looks very good in the comparison. I wish I could show it to you, but I don't have a scanner. I'm sure if you check your mail boxes, you'll be seeing it soon. Even if you don't live in New York.

Not much to say here, but I do have three quick observations.

1. It's nice to see education featured so prominently in a political campaign.
2. It's a shame that the issue is being used as a bludgeon instead of a launch point for real discussion.
3. When one side has billions of dollars to spend on advertising it's not really a surprise that we aren't going to have a nuanced conversation.

Also, in mayor-related news, check out this video. Happy Friday!

1 comment:

Pete Zucker said...

Wow. Amazing. That video seems so spontaneous.