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April 1, 2005
50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers
NY Press
It's full of your favorite cast of characters. Many of the people on this list are trying to outdo one another giving free real estate to last year's #49 Most Loathsome.
Brooklyn scores pretty high on the loathsome meter, even fan favorite Charles Barron gets spanked for not pulling the trigger in his Mayoral run.
#49. Daniel Doctoroff, Deputy Mayor
Everything about the [NYC2012] proposal was insane: the West Side Parking Lot, the security nightmare we'll have to pay for, the stadium subsidy heist, the traffic nightmares that'll begin years before the games show up. Most loathsome of all was Doctoroff's repeated use of 9/11 imagery to guilt trip the IOC.
#35. Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General
We're as happy as anyone that Spitzer is taking on giants of corruption and winning, but let's peek under the tights. Spitzer is less a ballsy bulldog than a run-of-the-mill politicking pussy.
#27. Charles Barron, City Council, District 42 (Sorry Charlie.)
The media has spared little expense painting him as the next Al Sharpton (when they acknowledge him at all), but when we interviewed him, we found him to be one of the smartest, most articulate, most honest politicians we've ever met. So why did he make it onto this list? Because he's a quitter who dropped out of the mayor's race in deference to the much softer C. Virginia Fields, claiming that two black candidates would split support.
#21. Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Borough President
Once upon a time, when the Board of Estimate ruled graft and contracts in New York, the five borough presidents had power. Today, it's a no-show job. The bad news with Markowitz is that he shows up, and so do his 116 employees, his multi-million-dollar budget and his four SUVs equipped with police
sirens. 
Not content with doing nothing, Markowitz finds time to advocate for the downtrodden, such as Ikea, Home Depot and developer Bruce Ratner in their noble quest to cannibalize mom-and-pop neighborhoods. The porcine oaf is also known for racing around the city in HOV lanes with police lights flashing, en route to handing out a plaque. Markowitz is up for reelection next year. Instead, he should save taxpayers millions of dollars and fire himself, fire his employees and turn Borough Hall into a methadone clinic. At least then we'd have a better class of people hanging around the place.
#19. Tony Danza, Host, The Tony Danza Show (and shamless promotion hack)
Yet in a city clogged with Italian restaurants, who does Danza pick to sponsor his food segments? The Olive Garden. Was Papa Gino's too busy?
#14. Amanda Burden
Burden gets loathsome points for dating Charlie Rose, but earns her way onto the list in her own right for heading up a rubber-stamp commission that betrays the true mandate of the city land-use approval process.
#11. Gifford Miller, Speaker, City Council
With just three years as speaker under his belt, Miller, 35, has compensated for his lack of political experience and ability to accomplish anything meaningful by quickly learning how to play quid pro quo.
#9. Anthony Weiner, Democratic Congressman, 9th District
His career highlights include thumbs-up photo ops with Jim Brady and Ehud Barak, and an award from the National Organization to Insure a Sound-Controlled Environment.
#1. Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City
There's something for everyone to hate in the born-again Republican mayor: shuttered firehouses; pushing cops to harass people to meet ticket quotas; his 18 percent property tax hike; his retarded and dishonest Olympics pursuit (and his hilarious call on New Yorkers to visit Greece to show support for the same); his exclusion of parents from any decisions on the future of their kids' schools; "Snapple loves New York, and New York loves Snapple!"; his complicity in abuse of eminent domain statutes; his initial refusal to investigate Guy Velellaís release (changing his mind only after the media shitstorm); his support for the secret 22 percent pay raise given by Pataki to the MTA's loathsome Katie Lapp; his "tort reform," which forces local property owners to pay the damages when someone gets hurt on a broken sidewalk; his vulgar efforts to buy off journalists and political parties to serve his needs (such as the $250,000 he gave to the Independence party, without whose ballot line he can't win).
Posted by lumi at April 1, 2005 6:10 AM