The New York Times’ Latest Snow Job: Tisch vs. Mamdani

The White House sucks and so does the New York Times, the newspaper that a schoolteacher told me years ago was “black and white and red all over.“ The masthead reads, “All the News that’s Fit to Print.” What the masthead doesn’t say is that The Times skews the news, disseminates bullshit like Judith Miller’s stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the use of “barnyard epithet” to describe the word that defendant Dave Dellinger uttered during the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Dave said “bullshit.”

Take a recent story about New York City’s Mayor and its Police Commissioner titled “She’s a Billionaire. He’s a Socialist. Can they get along?” Katherine Rosman, the author of the story, noted that “Mr. Mamdani, 34, is a Muslim whose political identity was shaped by his opposition to Israel,” and that “Ms. Tisch, 44, is Jewish, a supporter of Israel and a member of a prominent billionaire family.”

A Muslim outsider and a Jewish insider, Rosman seemed to be saying. Are there not other, more apt ways to identify the mayor and the commissioner? Rosman describes a meal around the Tisch dining room table where the family feasts on matzo ball soup. Reading about the matzo ball soup at the civilized table I was reminded that film director Martin Scorsese said of New York society, “What always stuck in my head is the brutality behind the manners.” He added that the violence was expressed “through very elaborate etiquette and ritual.” Manners are a cloak for murder.

Can’t get more heart-warming and ethnic than matzo ball soup. Harry, the commissioner’s ten-year-old son, tells his mother that she should accept Mamdani’s offer and remain in the same position she occupied during Eric Adams’ tenure as mayor.  “People across the country would be inspired by her and Mr. Mamdani’s ability to transcend their differences,” Harry said. Those are Rosman’s words not the kid’s. No direct quotes. Just a paraphrase. What did he actually say and why not quote a ten-year old?

Rosman writes, “Merryl Tisch, the family matriarch and the chair of the State University of New York Board of Trustees, looked at her daughter and shrugged. ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ she said. “You have your answer.” Kids say the darndest things! How homey. How sweet and how impressive! Wow, a matriarch! Can’t get juicier than that.

The reporter does not give the Mamdani tribe equal space. She offers no description of the Mamdani’s breaking bread or naan together, and there’s not a word about Zohran’s father Mahmood, who might be considered the patriarchy of the tribe, a professor at Columbia University—which caved into Trump— and the author of 14 books including Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda (1984,) Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (2004 and the magisterial Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities (2020).

Professors, intellectuals and authors don’t seem to count in Rosman’s hierarchy of New York society. Not long ago, the Commissioner attended a funeral for a police officer named Didarul Islam who was shot and killed by a gunman. “The night Didarul was killed, condolence messages poured in from every corner of the world,” she said. “His death united millions in prayer, and there was one refrain that echoed again and again: ‘May God grant him Jannah.’”

Mamdani also attended the funeral, but the biased reporter doesn’t offer a quotation from him, except that she allows that Mamdani praised the commissioner for her understanding of the Muslim faith. The empathy seems to be lodged only on one side. Rosman provides the who, the where, the what and the how of the story but she doesn’t provide the why. Indeed, why is it that a socialist and a police commissioner are apparently working together, supposedly for the good of New York and New Yorkers.

Perhaps they coexist now for the same reason that Joseph Fouché served as the French Minister of Police during the revolution, under liberals and radicals (the Girondists and the Jacobins), and after the revolution, under the rule of Napoleon. Fouché ransacked churches, sent their valuables to the treasury and helped establish the “Cult of Reason.” And then he became the top French cop, created a network of secret police, informers and agent provocateurs. Regimes came and went. Fouché remained powerful. Tisch has also had a long run in public office. She served with the police under de Blasio and Adams and now Mamdani. Politics makes for strange bedfellows.

The New York Times reporter gives Tisch the last word in the article about the billionaire and the Mayor. “I only play to win,” she says. When the annual, end-of-January snowstorm hit New York, Tisch told Mamdani, “you do not need to have a high amount of snow on the shovel; it’s better to take multiple smaller bites at it, lift smaller amounts of snow, and toss it aside. But do not try to go for the big, massive shovelful of snow because regardless of your health, this could cause a heart attack.” One might infer that the Times and indeed all New York mass media wouldn’t mind if Tisch remained in office and if Mamdani suffered a heart attack shoveling snow and was forced to resign.

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