New York Then & Now

When I was a boy, New York City was the greatest city in the world. It had the world’s largest population, the world’s tallest buildings, the world’s only collection of thousand foot skyscrapers, the United Nations, two World’s Fairs just 20 years apart, the world’s busiest airport and the unparalleled experiences of Wall Street, Times Square, Greenwich Village and Broadway. Also, of course, the winningest baseball teams in the country — the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers.

I remember at 10 years of age looking in the mirror and thinking how lucky I was to be born in New York. What were the odds of that?

And now, look how far New York City has fallen. Its population has been surpassed by nearly 40 cities around the world. It long ago lost the title of having the tallest building, and as for skyscrapers, New York may now have a dozen or more that rise over 1,000 feet, but at least 20 cities around the world have double that number and some even have as many as 200.

As for sports, everything has fallen apart. The Yankees don’t win anymore. In football, the Jets and the Giants have each played 11 games and lost them all except for two, there’s been no winners in hockey or basketball, and the New York Mets just traded away their spark plug Brandon Nimmo because he is too old and replaced him with someone who’s even older. We have been reduced to a second-class city. A city that doesn’t try anymore.

In my opinion, our new mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has his work cut out for him.

On an entirely other matter, I’d like to comment a little about Marjorie Taylor Green, a Republican Congressperson from Georgia.

She’s the supporter of President Donald Trump — now at odds with the president — who in the past has declared that California wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers, that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin filmed themselves sexually assaulting a child in a satanic ritual, that Muslim congressmen were not official members of Congress because they didn’t swear on a Bible, that a plane never hit the Pentagon but the U.S. government was behind the plan, that Parkland and Sandy Hook were staged to promote gun control, that Nancy Pelosi should be executed for treason, that Trump won the 2020 election, and that vaccines were a Nazi conspiracy. But now with the coming release of the Epstein files, she sees the truth and Trump’s misbehavior requires him to be punished.

She seems to have learned something. But I’m not quite sure what it is.

In any case, I have a plan. When I was a boy, people got punished if they told lies. It was a thing. (Think Richard Nixon.)

Also, if a kid got picked on by other kids and he ran to his father to ask him to help get it stopped, he’d get told simply to fight back. Fighting back would make the bully quit. And it did.

At the present time, the Republicans are telling these lies. Much of the general public believes what they hear because it comes through their cellphones. And the Democrats’ reaction is, like whiny frightened kids, to point out that the Republicans are telling lies.

“Here are the 10 lies Donald Trump told today,” one commentator with trembling lips said on TV.

Sissy. Nobody cares.

The answer? Tell even bigger lies. A whopper like this:

“A letter has just been found, written to the leader of the Proud Boys, in which Donald Trump directly tells them that after storming the Capital and rounding up the Congressmen he will arrive on a white horse and have certain Democrats hung.”

Etc. etc.

Eventually, readers and viewers of all these lies will come to the conclusion that everything on your smartphone is not true, not news, but entertainment.   Just for your amusement. Enjoy.

And thus, because facts matter, a new paradigm will have to be invented to present them. It will spring up electronically, in the same way that in bygone days facts were treasured in daily newspapers in New York City where editors, although slanting things one way or another, accepted that facts were at the foundation of what they would print.

Newsstands offered the New York Journal American, the Daily Mirror, the Daily News, The New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Post and the New York Telegram and Sun. Take your pick.

Meanwhile, on TV, CBS, NBC and ABC, every night at 6 p.m., respected commentators such as Walter Kronkite, John Cameron Swayze and a host of others were there to report to you the facts, as seen from a variety of other positions.

Did you know that for very little money today you can put an aerial up on your roof and by punching up your signal, still receive these stations, and others, including our local public TV stations absolutely free?

I think there’s plenty of truth-telling to be told, and just maybe, if the networks, the daily papers, and websites presented facts in a respectful way but with a little sauce from the left or the right, people would take the time to read, watch and listen and build their own views. While the fiction jokes, gossip, tap dancers, lies and fake promises come in on your smartphone. Fake baloney. A joy to behold.

Would we want the truth stuff in black and white? It worked in the old days.