Health Commissioner Friedan's Latest Bright Idea (From the Serf City Deleted Files)

Just when you thought Health Commissioner and High City Pharisee Thomas Frieden was done poking into our private health matters, after he banned trans fat, most cigarette smoking, and began monitoring the private health information records of all city diabetics for starters, comes this truly terrifying, Orwellian story from the NY Times. Apparently, Friedan is so concerned about the city’s AIDS epidemic, that he wants to start "encouraging" high risk men to be "voluntarily" circumsized, anotherwords to have the foreskins of their penises surgically removed. I mean, folks, where is this unbelievable insanity going to end?? Did Frieden ever hear of personal responsibility once in his whole life?
This latest madness of Frieden’s all started when there was just one, single experimental study done recently in Africa, where a small group of men who were circumsized suffered lower rates of HIV infection than normal groups. No sooner did news of this "breakthrough" cross the Atlantic than Frieden was jumping out of his desk chair with cleavers in hand, ready to slice up the family jewels of mostly what he describes as the city’s poor black and hispanic gay men. And this is before this single African study has even been re-tested, studied, confirmed and peer-reviewed.
Now, I have some questions here. Just how is the city going to "encourage" men to part with their most prized flesh, flesh from such a sensitive and important area? Are Frieden and Bloomberg going to offer small "bribes" or "inducements" to get these men to let some hack city doctor cut them up, then pat them on the behind and give them their blessings to have even more risky sex? After all, according to Commissioner Frieden, getting circumsized makes your sex much less risky, so encouraging these men to get a "skin job" will make their future sex safer, and by definition the rest of us will all be safer. Only, most of the rest of us usually don’t make it a point to seek out poor, homosexual vagrants to have sex with.
Ya gotta admire the gall, the sheer nerve, the incredible assumptiveness of a guy like Frieden. But look at it this way, Dr. Mengele never let his better judgement or simple-minded ethical considerations get in the way of Medical Progress, so why should Frieden? Hey, if "encouraging" poor, lower class black and Latino homosexuals to get circumsized can cut the spread of AIDS, maybe Frieden should just ban all sex between all New Yorkers who are not heterosexually married. After all, isn’t homosexual sex always more risky than heterosexual sex? And if it is, why not just ban it altogether? We banned all trans fat in restaurants because trans fat is always riskier than canola oil, after all. With something as dangerous as trans fat, or gay sex, and black and Latino gay sex at that, why take any chances letting average dumb people like us make our own judgements?
Maybe there could eventually be some way in the future for Frieden and Bloomberg to monitor all sex that goes on in NYC. We know for sure that if they could monitor all the sex we’re having, they would do it in a heartbeat, wouldn’t they? I mean, it would definitely make us safer, right?
Now, we know this circumcision thing would all be done the right way, Kosher I mean, if Frieden is doing it. Maybe Frieden could even get his qualified Jewish rabbi friends to do the brises, although that might require a whole new level of brotherhood and solidarity between the black and Latino and Jewish communities. It was one thing when Jewish People of Conscience were willing to walk in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama to end the Jim Crow laws, but would Righteous Jews also be willing to "get their hands dirty" circumsizing poor, black and Latino homosexual vagrants? Maybe they would do a Barack Obama, because he’s "clean", but Joe the Neighborhood Pimp?? The questions really make your head spin.
The whole proposal strikes me as so typically Thomas Frieden and Michael Bloomberg, who Jim Lesczynski, our Serf City Editor, so aptly and famously described as the world’s first Jewish puritans. I don’t know whether we should think of Frieden as a Jewish puritan, or a Jewish Nazi; Perhaps Frieden could most accurately be described as the world’s first Jewish Nazi Puritan. I mean, with his non-smoking, non-gourmet, anti-erotic, uber-health-nut mentality and sado-masochist authoritarian tendencies, the person he most reminds me of is a pre-1944 Adolph Hitler, without his own country and armed forces (Whew!).
I tell you, Commissioner Frieden is treading on very thin ice on this one. There is no more personal, sacred territory in one’s life than one’s own sexual identity and physical sexual capabilities and equipment. Thomas Frieden’s latest bright idea to start circumcizing all of us will hopefully be the issue where he went just one step too far and it cost him his neck. When Frieden is eventually forced to resign over this outrage, maybe he can go to Africa and try to save all of them from themselves, and leave us New Yorkers in peace, to save ourselves and our own families, and maybe enjoy our life, if that’s even still allowed in this city.

Famous New York Wrestling Fixture Crowned Greatest Drunk In History (from Serf City Deleted Files)

As a Manhattan kid growing up in the Tri-State Area, I often spent my weekends in Princeton, N.J., visiting my older cousin, who was almost like an older brother to me. In addition to helping wash the cars, mow the lawn, clean the pool and help him at his golf course job (all the hard work things that we all had fun doing as kids before we had to actually work for money), and after we went out to Good Time Charlie’s Steak House and then to Dairy Queen for desserts, and checked out the incredibly hot Princeton co-ed’s on campus, finally driving home while scanning the FM dial for the great 70’s music hits, late Saturday nights were always Wrestling Night for us, when we collapsed into the old sofas downstairs in the basement, turned on WOR Channel 9 TV and watched Vince McMahon’s mock indignation and outrage at the antics of yet another week of even more bogus and contrived over-the-top-silly wrestling fiascos.

Now, I gotta admit. Wrestling in the 1970’s was not exactly what you would describe as refined, elegant, cultured entertainment. No, I didn’t mention Wrestling Night when I was visiting Grandma or when I was interviewing for my private High School admission applications. But when I look back on it now, that 70’s wrestling age was probably the pinnacle of sublime adolescent schticke. And the whole grotesque spectacle of it all, with the wrestlers in their tight primitive spandex tights, the announcers wearing their conservative dark nylon ties and blazers and shocked expressions, and the cheering suburban white trash fans in the stands driven to the very brink of insanity, was somehow utterly beautiful, graceful, and breathtakingly captivating.

I have two lifetime favorite wrestlers very dear to my heart. The first I’ll mention is George The Animal Steele and his brilliant portrayal of Tor Johnson in Tim Burton’s immortal film masterpiece, "Ed Wood" (1994). I can still see George taking that big greedy bite of the poor Oven Stuffer Roaster and eating his watermelons in the dressing room. And of course, my first love in wrestling, as a young, bright-eyed amazed kid, was the incomparable 7′5″, 500 lb. Andre the Giant. Andre the Giant was frighteningly big, so much so that he made the other giant, hulking wrestlers around him look smallish and somewhat weakly. But Andre had a special personality, he was a gentle, sensitive giant who only crushed people and decapitated them when they were being bad and misbehaving. When Andre the Giant was not pulverizing his opponents or tossing them into the back bleacher seats, his special mellow humble persona was winning over admiring kids like me and my cousin and our friends. Andre had a special ability to make you feel good inside and love him.

Well, it turns out that on all those late 70’s Saturday nights, after Andre was finished with performing in the wrestling shows that we watched on TV, he was going out with his fellow wrestler buddies after work and drinking up the town. It turns out that Andre the Giant was probably the most prolific boozer, alcoholic and serial drunkard in all of human history, at least the history after the dinosaurs were wiped out. Anyway, Modern Drunkard Magazine has a great story this week on Andre and his drinking exploits. I think it’s required reading for any true, loyal native New Yorker, and any transplanted New Yorker who really wants to be a real official New Yorker (and especially New Yorkers who like to drink, you know, booze). I think anyone with the proper breeding and sensitivities will appreciate this one. A special thanks to Dan Gislao, still-honorary past-Manhattan LP member now living in Seattle for forwarding me this story.

Buy a Book, Cash a Check, and Get Frisked

It used to be when I was a kid that my local bank down the street had a nice, jolly old guy as the bank security guard, who also doubled as the organ player’s page-turner and as the fat guy responsible for handing out lolly pops and dressing up in the Santa suit. he would always have his trust .38 Special which hadn’t been unholstered or fired for ages. Also, when I used to go into my neighborhood book store, it was usually a quiet, mellow place where the biggest problem was people chewing bubble gum and giggling too loudly.

Well, those days are obviously long gone. I don’t know whether the rest of you have noticed, but many NYC merchants and banks are going one step further than private security guards and inviting New York Police Department officers to stand guard inside their storefronts. Last year, I started to resent having to walk past stern-faced police officers in my local Commerce Bank branches, who would also open doors for me, greet me as I walked in and exited, and even walk up to me inside the bank and make attempts at friendly conversations and small talk. Finally, I called the bank’s customer service line several times, left some heated messages, and had some interesting discussions with Commerce Bank executives. I basically explained to them that I regarded NYC police as oppressors who routinely harrass and arrest innocent residents and enforce evil things like victim disarmament (gun control), child kidnapping through ACS, and breaking down people’s doors for smoking or injesting certain plants–Oh, and also cracking down on Walking While Black or Driving While Latino, doing stop-and-frisks in "blighted neighborhoods", and enforcing eminent domain seizures. I also told the executives that for the officers to stand in the background of branches was perhaps more tolerable, but having the police stand right by the entrances, where we had to pas under their steely glare, and having them approach us and talk to us and try to be our friends, when we just wanted to do our private banking business, was really crossing the line.

Anyway, shortly after I spoke to Commerce, the Sean Bell 50 Shot Murder Massacre occurred, and suddenly I saw a lot less police in Commerce branches. The executives had asked me which branches I used regularly, implying they would investigate what was happening in those. But even now, in some Commerce branches there are regularly cops standing guard, while in others there are none.

Recently, as a regular customer of Barnes & Noble bookstores, I’ve noticed that NYPD police officers are hanging out in those too, and even stalking up and down the aisles of books. Now, when I complained to Commerce about them getting obvious corporate welfare and subsidized security from the taxpayers, they explained to me that the officers in their branches are hired and paid by the bank even though they’re wearing their NYPD uniforms. However, they are obviously still subsidized IMO in the sense that their radios, back-up, ammunition, and original training were paid for by taxpayers. Also, I told them that as a consumer and their customer, I want to avoid the NYPD as much as I can. I consider them offensive, brutish, and disrespectful of our Constitutional Rights, and I’ve had plenty of personal examples of that to know.

If these businesses want better security and protection so much, why don’t they just hire security guards who are armed? Well, I don’t know about the armed gun aspect, but apparently these merchants ALSO do hire private security, and the police are IN ADDITION to that. In the photo above you can see clearly that not only is the NYPD officer there, but also one of several Barnes & Noble security guards.

I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I’m sure there are plenty of other New Yorkers who are sick of all this pushy and intrusive security. Indeed, here in New York City if you’re unfortunate enough to be born into a lower class family and you can’t afford private schools or home-schooling (because of high taxes and regulation, of course), your children will inevitably be exposed to this aggressive security from the very first day they go to school, and for years afterwards; in NYC public schools, they will be searched for weapons, drugs, cellphones, makeup, too much money, illegal food and drinks, etc., and if necessary they will be sniffed by police attack dogs and have their lockers examined (or they may be body-strip searched by perverted school safety officers if they don’t cooperate, or sent to a NYC school psychiatrist for medicated behavior modification).

Personally, I’m sick of this shit, where we’re all treated like potential criminals and continuously threatened and intimidated by uniformed goons. That’s why when I go to businesses who have hired NYPD mercenaries, I always tell the manager that I don’t appreciate feeling threatened when I visit their store, I find it upsetting, demeaning, and it most likely discourages me from patronizing their store more regularly in the future. I feel if more concerned citizens did the same thing and spoke up, maybe we could pressure the city and our local businesses to tone down on these storefront SWAT teams.