Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Goodbye, Irene! Mike Bloomberg Now Relaxed Enough to Joke With Imaginary Twitter Self.

Irene turned out, thankfully, not to be a very big deal in New York City (though we should acknowledge that this is certainly not true outside the five boroughs). But if you were looking for the “things are back to normal” sign in Gotham, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg just provided it.

Via Twitter, of course. Here’s the message:


And here’s the back story: Bloomberg is responding to @ElBloombito, a parody account created over the weekend. It’s run by Rachel Figueroa-Levin, and it gently mocks the Mayor for his earnest but clumsy Spanish, which he brought out throughout the run-up to Irene.

(Kudos to the city, by the way, for its excellent use of all forms of media, to communicate as clearly and as often as it could about the storm. Go ahead and gripe about TV nudniks standing in the swells if you want. But again — this was a potentially devastating event, and even if some media outlets used fear and hype to chase ratings and pageviews, the government did some great work here. Okay. Off the soapbox now.)

Now that it’s Monday afternoon, apparently, Bloomberg feels comfortable enough taking time to respond to the jibes, in the most meta way possible: His Twitter message refers viewers to this YouTube clip of Bloomberg responding, in halting Spanish, to a question about the fake Spanish language Twitter account that mocks his halting Spanish.

Got all that? Short version: Things are looking up, at least in the city. Back to work, or vacation.

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