Fong unfazed: We were enjoying dim sum on Mott St. this week when we heard from reliable sources that things recently got heated at a Chinatown association meeting, and that some guy actually pulled a knife on Dewey Fong, a former deputy chief with the New York Police Department. Fong was unfazed, though, we’re told, shrugging it off and saying he has had guns pulled on him in the past when he was a cop. It wasn’t clear if this was a family association meeting or some other civic association. Needless to say, the news is pretty scandalous. And of all the people to pull a knife on! A police spokesperson could not immediately provide information on the alleged incident.
Purple poster: So what exactly was that graphic “…one nation, under God…” poster that Adam Purple’s daughter Jenean told us hung on their wall in Australia — and which an apparently offended Australian judge cited at Purple’s custody hearing for his kids, slamming it as a “vulgar placard”? Valerio Orselli, executive director of Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, shed some light. The poster, he said, “is a cartoon from The Realist magazine from the 1960s. It was obviously satire, although clearly not suitable for a very young girl. I think I may have it and it may have been reprinted in the ‘Best of the Realist’ book.” Indeed, the art was created by Frank Cieciorka and first published in Paul Krassner’s The Realist magazine’s Issue No. 48 in March 1964. It reportedly became a pretty popular poster in its day. But with its image of a naked God raping a naked, top hat-wearing Uncle Sam — we agree, it’s definitely not appropriate for the eyes of young children. In fact, we looked it up online, and we find it pretty hard to look at! For more on Orselli, read this week’s community reaction article in The Villager on Adam Purple’s history of child sex abuse. Orselli slams the gardens legend, saying pedophiles should be outed.
Pedicab panic: Also in this week’s Adam Purple response article is pedicab pioneer George Bliss, who defends the Garden of Eden’s creator as as an environmental visionary, albeit a deeply personally flawed one. On the subject of pedicabs, Bliss said he’s saddened to see how the industry now looks to be on the ropes with the mayor’s new idea of putting the carriage horses in Central Park squeezing out the pedal-pushing cabbies. “I worked for eight years to bring pedicabs to New York,” he said. The main problem, according to him, is that the city never did what he urged it to do — create pedicab stations. Instead we’re left with today’s chaotic situation, where pedicab drivers just swarm people randomly anywhere near Central Park South and aggressively thrust promotional signs in their faces.
Cloak-and-dagger posts: Well, the anonymous reader comments on any article involving the special election in the 65th Assembly District appear to have abated. It seemed that the online comments were the work of one or maybe two people, just judging by their tone and wording. Usually, they were championing Jenifer Rajkumar, while often slamming her opponents, including Yuh-Line Niou — a.k.a. “that Niou girl” — and sometimes Rajkumar’s co-district leader, Paul Newell. Things really got weird when two of the anonymous posters started having a “conversation” with another. “Agreed,” one of them told the other on some point we can’t remember. But we can see where the comments are coming from (because — duh! — we are the moderator of the Web site) and what the actual user names are — as opposed to the phony ones this person was using. Both posts came from the same e-mail address and I.P.N. somewhere in Scarsdale. If we need to call in Edward Snowden to investigate further, we will! Anyone who dared speak up on the comment threads, calling for the commenter(s) to put a name with the posts, was viciously bashed and told that they know nothing — nothing! — about how local politics works, that it’s a bloodsport. Clayton Patterson, for example, was told to shut up and emigrate to Austria already, while Patrick Shields, who is an actor-turned-window washer, was nastily chided to butt out and keep “cleaning the pigeon crap off the window sills.” Wow! Classy! Someone — maybe the same person — also slammed Jeanne Wilcke, the president of Downtown Independent Democrats, and Sean Sweeney, another D.I.D. leader, for not forcing the club to pick a candidate, calling them spineless, “all talk,” etc., etc. Rajkumar told us she doesn’t know who was behind all the anonymous posts, which seemed to us like an attempt to spin the race. Then again, it’s not even exactly a race yet — no one knows if Governor Andrew Cuomo will call a special election of April 19, as he has previously said he would do. But at least the anonymous comments seem to be under control… . Famous last words? … As for why the pseudonymous posts have dried up, it might well have been because we were poking around about it. “Word travels fast in political circles,” Sweeney told us.
