The Borough President of Brooklyn,
Marty Markowitz, rose to power simply by showing up, at street fairs, house parties, and barbecues, a jovial fellow eager to press the flesh and eat it, too, if it was offered. He seemed harmless enough. The office he's since made his sinecure, Borough President, is basically a cheerleading one, and he does it with gusto, getting all Brooklyn on us by parlaying a stereotype that was old by the 1970s. Again, seemingly harmless, a colorful advertisement of pretend attitude. But Markowitz has really made a name for himself, and enriched his network of charities -- that political euphemism for "money laundering operations" -- by $20 million dollars by playing patty-cake with developers, bankers, and corporate goons, the destroyers of the very borough he claims to cheerlead for. $20 million buys a lot of allies, but there's only one thing to say to Markowitz's dream of being NYC mayor: fuhgeddaboudit!
