[Mb-civic] A Blue City

[Barbara Siomos]

  Editor's Note | A centerpiece of the Bush campaign was their claim
that Bush was the best man to keep America safe from another terrorist
attack. It is worthwhile to note, therefore, the reaction of the city of
New York to the election results on Tuesday. This great city, which
absorbed the horrific blow of 9/11, did not think Bush was the right man
for the job. - wrp

  A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America
  By Joseph Berger
  The New York Times
  Thursday 04 November 2004

  Striking a characteristic New York pose near Lincoln Center
yesterday, Beverly Camhe clutched three morning newspapers to her chest
while balancing a large latte and talked about how disconsolate she was
to realize that not only had her candidate, John Kerry, lost but that
she and her city were so out of step with the rest of the country.
  "Do you know how I described New York to my European friends?" she
said. "New York is an island off the coast of Europe."

  Like Ms. Camhe, a film producer, three of every four voters in New
York City gave Mr. Kerry their vote, a starkly different choice from the
rest of the nation. So they awoke yesterday with something of a woozy
existential hangover and had to confront once again how much of a 51st
State they are, different in their sensibilities, lifestyles and
polyglot texture from most of America. The election seemed to reverse
the perspective of the famous Saul Steinberg cartoon, with much of the
land mass of America now in the foreground and New York a tiny, distant
and irrelevant dot.

  Some New Yorkers, like Meredith Hackett, a 25-year-old barmaid in
Brooklyn, said they didn't even know any people who had voted for
President Bush. (In both Manhattan and the Bronx, Mr. Bush received 16.7
percent of the vote.) Others spoke of a feeling of isolation from their
fellow Americans, a sense that perhaps Middle America doesn't care as
much about New York and its animating concerns as it seemed to in the
weeks immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center.

  "Everybody seems to hate us these days," said Zito Joseph, a
63-year-old retired psychiatrist. "None of the people who are likely to
be hit by a terrorist attack voted for Bush. But the heartland people
seemed to be saying, "We're not affected by it if there would be another
terrorist attack.'" City residents talked about this chasm between
outlooks with characteristic New York bluntness.

  Dr. Joseph, a bearded, broad-shouldered man with silken gray hair,
was sharing coffee and cigarettes with his fellow dog walker, Roberta
Kimmel Cohn, at an outdoor table outside the hole-in-the-wall Breadsoul
Cafe near Lincoln Center. The site was almost a cliché corner of
cosmopolitan Manhattan, with a newsstand next door selling French and
Italian newspapers and, a bit farther down, the Lincoln Plaza theater
showing foreign movies. "I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness
and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland," Dr.
Joseph said. "This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a
very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country -
in the heartland."

  "New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of
consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one
mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for
us," he said.

  His friend, Ms. Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art,
contended that New Yorkers were not as fooled by Mr. Bush's statements
as other Americans might be. "New Yorkers are savvy," she said. "We have
street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what
their friends say." "They're very 1950's," she said of Midwesterners.
"When I go back there, I feel I'm in a time warp."

  Dr. Joseph acknowledged that such attitudes could feed into the
perception that New Yorkers are cultural elitists, but he didn't
apologize for it.
  "People who are more competitive and proficient at what they do
tend to gravitate toward cities," he said.

  Like those in the rest of the country, New Yorkers stayed up late
watching the results, and some went to bed with a glimmer of hope that
Mr. Kerry might yet find victory in some fortuitous combination of
battleground states. But they awoke to reality. Some politically
conscious children were disheartened - or sleepy - enough to ask parents
if they could stay home. But even grownups were unnerved.

  "To paraphrase our current president, I'm in shock and awe," said
Keithe Sales, a 58-year-old former publishing administrator walking a
dog near Central Park. He said he and friends shared a feeling of
"disempowerment" as a result of the country's choice of President Bush.
"There is a feeling of 'What do I have to do to get this man out of
office?"

  In downtown Brooklyn, J. J. Murphy, 34, a teacher, said that Mr.
Kerry's loss underscored the geographic divide between the Northeast and
the rest of the country. He harked back to Reconstruction to help
explain his point. "One thing Clinton and Gore had going for them was
they were from the South," he said. "There's a lot of resentment toward
the Northeast carpetbagger stereotype, and Kerry fit right in to that."
Mr. Murphy said he understood why Mr. Bush appealed to Southerners in a
way that he did not appeal to New Yorkers. "Even though Bush isn't one
of them - he's a son of privilege - he comes off as just a good old
boy," Mr. Murphy said.

  Pondering the disparity, Bret Adams, a 33-year-old computer
network administrator in Rego Park, Queens, said, "I think a lot of the
country sees New York as a wild and crazy place, where these things like
the war protests happen."

  Ms. Camhe, the film producer, frequents Elaine's restaurant with
friends and spends many mornings on a bench in Central Park talking
politics with homeless people with whom she's become acquainted. She
spent part of Tuesday knocking on doors in Pennsylvania to rustle up
Kerry votes then returned to Manhattan to attend an election-night party
thrown by Miramax's chairman, Harvey Weinstein, at The Palm. Ms. Camhe
was also up much of the night talking to a son in California who was
depressed at the election results.

  When it became clear yesterday morning that the outlook for a
Kerry squeaker was a mirage, she was unable to eat breakfast. Her
doorman on Central Park West gave her a consoling hug. Then a friend
buying coffee along with her said she had just heard a report on
television that Mr. Kerry had conceded and tears welled in Ms. Camhe's
eyes.

  Ms. Camhe explained the habits and beliefs of those dwelling in
the heartland like an anthropologist. "What's different about New York
City is it tends to bring people together and so we can't ignore each
others' dreams and values and it creates a much more inclusive
consciousness," she said. 

"When you're in a more isolated environment, you're more susceptible to
some ideology that's imposed on you." As an example, Ms. Camhe offered
the different attitudes New Yorkers may have about social issues like
gay marriage. "We live in this marvelous diversity where we actually
have gay neighbors," she said. "They're not some vilified unknown.
They're our neighbors." But she said that a dichotomy of outlooks was
bad for the country.

  "If the heartland feels so alienated from us, then it behooves us
to wrap our arms around the heartland," she said. "We need to bring our
way of life, which is honoring diversity and having compassion for
people with different lifestyles, on a trip around the country."
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