A Stunning Display of Hypocrisy from New York Mayor

A clip of New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams has been making the rounds on the platform formerly known as Twitter, for a lot of reasons.

The absolute tomf*ckery in this clip is astounding, not only because of how tone-deaf and hypocritical it is, but for the vast array of flavors of hypocrisy Mayor Adams manages to pack into a two-minute clip. My guy is usually a scoop of Neapolitan on the insidious irony scale, but he brought the entire Baskin Robbins to this meeting.

Shall we unpack?

(Of course we shall. What the hell else are we here for?)

In the clip, Adams expounds on the myriad difficulties New York is facing in the wake of the. . . “migrants” that are flooding the city. Which, yeah, it’s a pretty big deal. Causing lots of problems for lots of places.

But for Adams to b*tch about it is completely out of line, and I have identified 4 key reasons as to why. Let’s get into them.

1. Uhh, what about the border states? “This is an issue,” Mayor Adams says of mass migration, “that will destroy New York City.” Well, yeah, I guess it might. Since spring 2022, the city’s seen 90,000 migrants roll in, and continue to welcome around 10,000 every month. I have no doubt that they’re putting an enormous strain on the city’s resources.

Now imagine how things must be along the actual border. In New York, the amount of migrants who have arrived equal about 1% of the city’s population. In Brownsville, Texas, the town of almost 188,000 people saw an influx of 15,000 migrants— 8% of the population. Oh, and that was in the span of a week.

Brownville also, it’s worth pointing out, never marketed itself as a sanctuary city.

Adams goes on to lament, “Everyone is saying this is New York City’s problem.” Oh, you mean like how you and your ilk were more than happy to turn a blind eye to the plight of border states because it was their problem? Funny how things come back around.

So I’m officially naming this flavor Va-NIMBY. Adams was all about welcoming migrants with open arms until they actually called his bluff, and now he’d prefer they stay in someone else’s backyard.

2. Call it by its name, Eric. Throughout the clip, Adams refers to “migrants.” In complete fairness, I don’t think he really realizes what’s happening here; I think he’s so accustomed to his party’s impetus to cloak the truth in intentionally misleading language that it never even occurred to him to use the word “illegal” in reference to the migrants who, by and large, came to New York. . . illegally.

Then again, it does allow him to obfuscate the root of the problem: he references “what they are doing to us” (emphasis added), but the context implies he’s not referring to the, er, migrants themselves, or even the governments of countries like Mexico who are all too happy to pass along the buck. No, the “they” in question are people like Governor Abbott of Texas who had the audacity to call Adams’s “sanctuary city” bluff and send him the migrants he’s so keen to help.

But the fact is, the immigration system is broken. The border is wide open. The people straining New York’s resources and budget are not (all) migrants, they are illegal immigrants. If Adams actually wants to improve the situation, he has to start by being honest about the Prob-Lemon Sorbet.

3. Someone should tell this guy about Ellis Island. Mayor Adams lists a veritable melting pot of nationalities that have been arriving in New York via the southern border, concluding, “people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.”

I remember when that used to be a source of pride for the home of the Statue of Liberty. Surely it wasn’t that long ago that her “huddled masses yearning to be free” were referenced in vitriolic response to Trump’s border wall and other efforts to curb illegal immigration?

I went to New York for a weekend when I was around 13 or 14 (my dad took me to see Bon Jovi at Madison Square Garden and it was LIT) and spent the next five years of my life being OBSESSED with the place as only a teenage girl can be. My infatuation was spurred in no small part by our trip to the museum at Ellis Island and an awed respect for the hopeful, hardened people from all over the world who scraped out a future on the streets of New York– the people who made it what it is.

But I guess that’s all part of the Past-achio.

4. Which part of DEI literature is being referenced here? “It’s going to come for your neighborhoods,” Mayor Adams warns. “The city we knew, we’re about to lose.”

Is it just me, or does he sound particularly. . . antagonistic? Dare I say, intolerant? Adams’s rhetoric throughout the video, but particularly toward the end, has a distinct “us vs them” dynamic, and it’s not very inclusive– or diverse, or equitable/equal. Perhaps he’s realizing that the tenets of progressive tolerance don’t actually work out that well in the real world, where sometimes the naughty party isn’t composed entirely of wealthy, white, cisgender, uh. . . OH, straight, and. . . colonial? did I get them all? men.

But I think it’s possible to be honest about humanity and still hit the brakes before slipping into that “us vs them” territory. Not for Mayor Adams, apparently, but for other, better leaders. Even if it’s not, I think it’s worth pointing out that he rode right on out of DEI-town.

Not that Republican leaders could get away with it, of course, but that’s all par for the course. Rules for Thee, Not for Me-nt Chocolate Chip, if you will.