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June 18, 2009
The Brooklyn Paper mailbag
The Brooklyn Paper, Letters
Two letters this week address the last week's kooky pro-Conseco Fieldhouse, um, new Barclays Center editorial.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's Daniel Goldstein weighs in first.
To the editor,
Ralph Waldo Emerson railed against “foolish consistency.” Surely he had even less respect for foolish inconsistency. A newspaper’s editorial opinion means nothing if it is inconsistent. In last week’s editorial (“Just do it,” June 11), The Brooklyn Paper seems to be priding itself on some imagined consistency when it advocates for a taxpayer-funded arena on top of private property, city streets and the Vanderbilt Rail Yards — part of the proposed Atlantic Yards project — even more vehemently now that starchitect Frank Gehry has been dropped from the whole project.
But The Paper is downright defensive in its claims of consistency. That defensiveness is understandable because there is nothing consistent in the Paper’s opinion. In March, 2008, it editorialized: “The state must take back the development rights over the rail yards and put them out for bid. Doing so would not only cleanse state officials of the Original Sin of Atlantic Yards (namely selling Ratner the air rights for $100 million less than their appraised value), but it would also set right Bruce Ratner’s very wrong project.” So, while the Paper may now claim it has always wanted this arena, it hasn’t; it has never actually supported Ratner’s plan and never supported eminent domain or public subsidies upon which the arena and the rest of the project are dependent.
Did “Bruce Ratner’s very wrong project” suddenly become very right because the developer dumped the architect whose reputation he levered for project approval?
[Warning: The following letter to the editor is rated NC-17.]
To the editor,
Just do it???????
Are you f—ing kidding me?
On the front page of our newspaper????
You f—ing traitor!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just build a f—ing shack so Ratner can make money??????? What the f–????
Do you have any principles??? Do you have any balls at all????
“Just do it”???? I’ll just stop reading the only paper that told the truth!!!
Holy f–!! I’m disgusted!!!!!!!
Shame on you!!!!!!!
Shame on you!!!!!!!!
Robert Frumkin, Prospect Heights
Posted by eric at June 18, 2009 5:25 PM