I'm just listening to Spanish TV, and Mayor Bloomberg is on. Now I'm a gringo who speaks Spanish with an American accent, but hizzoner really makes no effort whatsoever to sound the way the language does, and sounds ridiculous to even my less-than-perfect ear.
I should probably be more tolerant, like I am with my students. On the other hand, they're just kids trying to get by, while the mayor is an outrageous opportunist who's blatantly defying the twice-voiced will of the people.
It's not just his deliberate perversion of the term-limit referendum. Mayor Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat, ran as a Republican when he realized even all that money was not going to buy him the nomination eight years ago. Then, wanting to be President, he dropped his GOP registration, hoping to wrest the "maverick" designation from Johny McCain. When polls told him he had no shot at the presidency, he went back to the GOP, cash-filled hat in hand, and worked something out. The party bosses may have been in a snit, but there was no way they were going to advance another candidate with the remotest chance of winning.
So now Mayor Bloomberg is trying to convince Spanish speakers that he cares about them. I hope they aren't as gullible as we English speakers are. Unless you're a team owner or Eva Moskowitz, you and your kids have little chance of benefitting from his continued tenure as mayor.
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