Bloomberg and vets

There’s only one Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and he has only one attitude to the nation’s veterans:

To hell with ’em.

We’ve recently seen how his cops and prosecutors threw a Marine in jail for gun possession, a very serious crime in NYC if you’re not a career criminal, who gets a pass. Then they threw a SEAL down the booby hatch for saying he was a SEAL (to be fair, they’ve also passed up robbers and murderers to lock up a political organizer and a medical student).

Now Bloomberg, who is worth $19.5 billion thanks in part to creative draft-dodging during the Vietnam war, has responded to suggestions that the city stage a welcome-home parade for the troops withdrawn from Iraq after that long, and so far, somewhat successful, mission.

Bloomberg’s answer: hell, no.

He says that Army officials said a parade was “inappropriate” now. “A a parade would be premature while we still have so many troops in harm’s way around the world,” the mayor said on the radio. Ah OK, it’s not him….

After al, with many troops still in Europe and the Pacific, New York didn’t celebrate V-E or V-J day… oh, wait. They did.

And what a Pentagon spokesman actually said publicly was that “officials were grateful communities were finding ways to recognize the sacrifices of troops and their families,” the AP paraphrases. We don’t know what officials he could have been referring to — not New York ones, clearly.

It’s a pity, because most New Yorkers are great people, we have seen their grit, humor and generosity in good times and ill, and they deserve better politicians than they have; but then, Americans are a race of noble giants whose politicians are, or become, poisonous dwarves.QED.

Michael Bloomberg’s failure to grasp V-E Day may not be entirely his own fault: it maybe inherited. Neither his father nor grandfather appears to have served. (His father sat World War II out in a Massachusetts dairy). His own children (both daughters) were raised to share their family’s view that service is beneath them.

Given the character that runs in their veins, it’s probably good news for the services.

Source: News from The Associated Press.

Image: Bloomberg’s website… yes, even the horror-show blue tint.