Viral Spring #4: Gimme Shelter

-- By Tom Phillips

Following the advice of anxious family and friends, I have decided to curtail my reporting jaunts in the neighborhood, and concentrate on sheltering in place. I still go for walks, but plan them so they can be solitary or with my wife. I hang out the window to join the ovation for local health care workers at 7 p.m. each night.  I read the papers, go to classes and conferences via Zoom or Google Hangouts.  And we watch TV, something we rarely do in ordinary time.  At last I'm getting my money's worth from the cable company.   And TV has changed my life. 

Today I watched Governor Andy Cuomo's daily briefing -- an hour-long monologue with Power Point graphics popping up before he even starts talking about a topic. He knows what he's going to say and likes to underline it with a simple caption like STAY HOME. 

Cuomo's soaring popularity shows how quickly perceptions change in a crisis. This is the same governor whose autocratic, power-grabbing, know-it-all, Andy-centric, self-aggrandizing antics have made him so tiresome to New Yorkers in his interminable third term.  The difference is that in a crisis, autocrats become assets.

Since when does a governor of New York get to appeal for National Unity?  Since when does a governor of New York tell other states to send medical supplies and personnel, and promise to return the favor when the pandemic comes to them?  Since the breakdown of the federal system is when.

Cuomo begins with obligatory praise for the president's help, then details how thoroughly the federal government has bungled the crisis -- telling the states to fend for themselves and then sending FEMA in to outbid them for medical supplies.  When are we gonna get those ventilatahs??  When the US gets its act together, probably not in time. 

Since when does a governor share his family life with a national audience?  Not since Mario Cuomo spoke to the 1984 Democratic Convention has any politician's devotion to his mother been so widely shared.  Not to mention Andy's tender care for little brother Chris -- a sweet guy, and strong, but "not as strong as he thinks he is." Stay home, bro, says Andy.  And that means you too, America.    Amazingly, I'm convinced, shamed into compliance. Andy has done what my family and friends couldn't do... keep me off the street. 

If he were running for president, this is how he’d do it.  But I believe him when he says he’s not.   A good Democrat, he would rather see the party lose than tear it apart.  There’s always 2024.  The problem is, he won’t have the virus as his running mate.

-- Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips 

Corona Journal

-- By Tom Phillips

Things you never thought you'd see:  The world's greatest city, cowed into silence, emptied out by a virus.  This was the scene at Tom's Restaurant on 112th Street at 11 p.m. last night. The everlit neon sign, emblem of Jerry Seinfeld's Upper West Side enlightenment, extinguished.  The nighthawks of  the counter back in their nests.

Closed

Meanwhile three New Yorkers duke it out in the political version of a playground feud.  Bill the Mayor, Andy the Governor, and Donny the Class President each vies to turn this Coronavirus Crisis to his everlasting advantage.  

Bill opens with disastrous blunder. New York should do like San Francisco, he says,  Shelter at Home.  Andy responds with a Bronx cheer.  You jerk, New York don't imitate San Francisco!  Don't tell people what to do.  

Donny from Queens, the wannabe bully who cries every time somebody challenges him, comes up with his latest brilliant idea: He'll borrow a trillion dollars from his father and just hand it out to everybody on the playground!  This idea he stole straight from his enemies, Brooklyn Bernie and the Yang gang.  Donny thinks it will assure his re-election as Class President, which everybody knows he cheated to win the first time.  

Donny's secret is well known.  He borrows money and doesn't pay it back.  

Meanwhile New York's introverts stay home and work on their projects.    

Checkout girls from places like Burkina Faso keep working at West Side Market, handling money all day, three feet or less from their customers.  Who's gonna get sick?  

Homeless people sit on street corners all night.  Donations accepted.  Three guys from Central America huddle on a heating grate outside Columbia, drinking vodka from a bottle, talking it over in Spanish.  St. Luke's is filling up with Coronavirus cases.  Everybody knows we don't have enough beds, not even half the capacity of a place like Italy. Why is that?  

Don't ask Donny.  Somebody asked him -- why is it celebrities are getting tested for the virus, but there's no tests for ordinary people?   

Donny's answer: That's just the "story of life."  

More to come. Worse to come.  

--  Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips