In response to the biased "praises" and instant beatification of Ed Koch, I made a YouTube video set to music by Dalida, to help visualise former Mayor Ed Koch's complete failure on the AIDS crisis.
My video was made in response to the video promoted by The New York Times, which whitewashes any responsibility or culpability of the AIDS crisis away from former Mayor Ed Koch :
I'd love to hear what folks think ?
From The Nation
The instant beatification of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch has a lot of folks itching to do some grave dancing. Leftists will denounce Koch because he was one of the original neoliberal mayors, ushering in a regime of gentrification and finance-driven inequality that defines the city to this day. Minorities regard him with suspicion because he marginalized the city’s black and Hispanic leadership and inflamed racial fault lines to corner the white vote, presaging the Sister Souljah moments that would come to afflict the national Democratic Party. And yet even there, among the new Democrats, Koch was never a stalwart, breaking with the party to endorse George W. Bush for president in 2004 and flirting with the neocons over Israel late in his life.
All that said, there is a special place reserved for Koch in gay hell—because he was mayor during the onset of the AIDS epidemic, which he is widely seen as failing to do enough about, and because it’s commonly assumed that Koch was a closeted gay man. “I hope he’s burning next to Roy Cohn”—or sentiments quite like it—have appeared frequently on my Facebook feed, especially from vets of ACT UP. ...
Read more : Ed Koch and the Cost of the Closet (The Nation)
NYTimes Obituary : Hugh Carey, Who Led Fiscal Rescue of New York City, Is Dead at 92
From The New York Times :
Hugh L. Carey, the governor who helped rescue New York from the brink of financial collapse in the 1970s and tamed a culture of ever-growing spending, died Sunday at his summer home on Shelter Island. He was 92.
His death was announced by the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
“Governor Carey led our state during a time of great financial turmoil and pulled us back from the brink of bankruptcy and economic ruin,” Mr. Cuomo said in the statement.
As the 51st governor of New York from 1975 through 1982, Mr. Carey led a small group of public servants who vanquished the fiscal crisis that threatened New York City and the state — the direst emergency a governor had faced since the Depression — by taking on powers over the city’s finances that no governor had wielded before and none has wielded since. A liberal Democrat, Mr. Carey reversed the upward spiral of borrowing, spending and entitlement under his predecessor, Nelson A. Rockefeller, a Republican who had presided in an era of limitless government promise. ....
Geraldine A. Ferraro, First Woman on Major Party Ticket, Dies at 75
NYTimes : Geraldine A. Ferraro, a former Conggresswoman from Queens, New York, who was nominated in 1984 to be the Democratic Party's vice presidential candidate, was the first woman nominated for national office by a major political party. She died Saturday in from complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Flashback : Watch an excerpt of Geraldine Ferraro's 1984 Vice Presidential Acceptance Speech :
