Ready, set…go! Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, left, and Jenifer Rajkumar, co-chairperson of the Ready for Hillary National Finance Council, were all smiles at the final Ready for Hillary event on Sunday at a Battery Park City restaurant. “Three hundred-plus people came,” District Leader Rajkumar e-mailed us afterward about the turnout. “Did you see us on TV? Our event was even on the TV screens on the back of the taxi cabs. Most of the major news channels ended up coming to the event and even elected officials from other boroughs. SouthWest NY was packed.” Earlier in the day, Hillary Clinton had announced her campaign for president in a segment that was rolled out online. Former governor candidate and progressive darling Zephyr Teachout promptly tweeted out her assessment: “Clinton ad announcing campaign is surprisingly free of content, lacking autobiography, policy, vision. Hope she quickly holds press conf.”
Rock-star reading: Speaking of progressives, Senator Elizabeth Warren, above, drew an equally big and enthusiatic crowd last Thurs., April 9, when she was at The Strand bookstore on Broadway in Noho to plug the release of the soft-cover version of her autobiography, “A Fighting Chance.” “She was ostensibly promoting the paperback of her book,” a source tells us. “She read from it. But it sounded like a campaign stump speech. It was in the rare books room at The Strand. Three hundred people were lined up outside around the corner to get in.” Needless to say, most in the crowd were hoping that Warren will eventually throw her hat in the ring, and that someone will give Clinton a strong primary challenge — if not more. Some of them wore “Run Warren Run” T-shirts, sporting a Web address, www.RunWarrenRun.org. G.O.P. candidate Rand Paul will be visiting The Strand next month.
Crazy about Skenazy: Google “America’s Worst Mom” and you’ll quickly learn that Lenore Skenazy once let her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone. The columnist and reality show host got that title after writing about her boy’s remarkable experience safely getting from point A to point B without an adult by his side. But not everyone thought this was a good idea, and in response to the media blowback, she founded the bookblog and movement “Free-Range Kids.” Her feisty belief that our kids are safer and smarter than our culture gives them credit for has landed her on talk shows including “Dr. Phil” and “The View.” She has lectured internationally, from Microsoft’s headquarters to the Sydney Opera House, and she’s also host of “World’s Worst Mom,” a reality show airing on Discovery-TLC in most of the world (but, surprisingly, not America!). Now, Skenazy brings her brand of fun, engaging writing to the Community News Group and New York Community Media, where her new column “Rhymes With Crazy” will appear each week. A graduate of Yale, she lives Queens with her husband and two teen sons. Her writing has appeared in the New York Daily News, where she was a columnist for 14 years, the New York Sun, NPR and, of course, MAD magazine. So check out what Lenore has to say this week and every week in The Villager.
Corrections: Last week’s photo caption for a religious procession on E. Houston St. stated that it occurred on a Sunday and, due to a typo, that the congregants were from St. Mark’s Church. In fact, it was on Good Friday, and the marchers were from St. Mary’s Church, as well as Church of the Nativity, Most Holy Redeemer Church and Our Lady of Sorrows Church. Congregants of Nativity, on E. Third St., are fighting to keep their house of worship open in the face of a planned merger by the archdiocese. … In Minerva Durham’s piece in last week’s issue on Soho super Matthew McGuigan’s wake, due to an editing error, McGuigan’s age was incorrectly given as 66, but he was 76. … Also, The Villager’s article two weeks ago on the newspaper’s awards in the 2014 NYPA Better Newspaper Contest failed to mention that Associate Publisher Troy Masters and Editor Paul Schindler from our sister paper Gay City News “ ’Netted” first place for Best Web Site Home Page. Congrats!
