Who watches the Watchmen?
By the Guy on the 13th Floor
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Illustration by J.P. Thimot.
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Let’s start with the name. We have a President who watches—i.e., spies on—his citizens, and now our local elected officials think they have a license. In retrospect, Jeanine Pirro should not have gone to Bernard Kerik to spy on her husband; she should have gone to Buffalo deputy mayor Steve Casey.
You’ll remember that Pirro was the former Westchester County D.A. who ran for attorney general this year after deciding against a run for U.S. Senate. She also contemplated spying on her husband because she suspected him of cheating on her. The trouble for Jeanine is that she got caught on tape talking about her plan with disgraced former New York City police commissioner Kerik (you know, the one with mob ties). Getting caught on tape is apparently not illegal, but plotting to put a hidden camera on hubby’s boat was interesting enough to six law enforcement agencies for them to launch a political-career-ending investigation.
About the same time, Buffalo’s deputy mayor tried to sneak through his own espionage infrastructure which, in a rare instance of comedic brilliance, the Buffalo News dubbed the “Casey Cam.” The Cam plan was for City Hall’s new security system to have cameras everywhere in the building with monitors in Casey’s office; he would then be in an ideal position to spy on Pirro’s husband Al if he met his mistress on the observatory deck.
For his part, Al Pirro denied having a “new” affair, but said he was spending time with other women because he wasn’t getting enough “attention” (read: sex) from his wife, the candidate. Al Pirro actually said this (in New York magazine), and he actually said this before the election. Apparently his plan worked, because his wife now finds herself with plenty of free time.
Which brings us back to Armageddon.
Just as in the end of Watchmen, Buffalo suffered its own utter destruction at the hands of a global-warming inspired “freak” snowstorm in October. (Of course some of us are wondering how any snowstorm at any time in Buffalo can truly be considered “freak.”) Anyway, the storm left most of our trees (and everything under them) looking like the Bills’ offensive line.
Acting more like a Giuliani than a Nagin, Mayor Byron Brown was all over the place. Within hours of the destruction, we saw lots of trucks with license plates from across the country doing … stuff. We still didn’t have power on the 13th floor for five days, but the kids got a week off from school, everyone looked busy, and the mayor narrated everything in real time. President Bush missed an ideal opportunity to call and repeat his “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” line, this time with at least an element of truth.
Instead, it was Congressman Tom Reynolds on the phone with the President about the storm. Reynolds called in FEMA to clean up those parts of his congressional district that were (a) hit by the storm and (b) also hit by the Mark Foley scandal. In an attempt to fend off the political damage to the previously surging “Crazy” Jack Davis, fellow Democrat Brian Higgins started blasting FEMA for not knowing where Buffalo is. This was still a rare postive opportunity for Reynolds, whose campaign had thus far consisted of a sweaty press conference, an apology ad, and another press conference in which the embattled Congressman was surrounded by a human shield of toddlers as he attempted to explain why, despite accepting a $100,000 check from Foley, he really was against the exploitation of children.
The low point of the Reynolds campaign came when John “Straight Talk” McCain cancelled an appearance with Reynolds at a local Republican fundraiser on the excuse—an excuse that came a week after the cancellation—that he wanted to spend time with his sick mother. Riiight. McCain was replaced by Karl Rove as the keynote speaker.
OK, McCain is so popular nationally that Republicans across the country are giving each other framed pictures of him as gifts as they go off to prison. He da man. Rove is so vile a figure that we’re told fellow White House employees actually walk out of the building in order to to avoid him in the halls of power. Maybe the idea was to scare donors into giving money to Reynolds.Or maybe it was like giving a drowning man a glass of water. Couldn’t make things worse, right?
And that brings us back to Watchmen. One of the lead characters is called Rorschach—he can seem like a hero or a villain, but one way or another he’s crazy. Just like Western New York politics.
The Guy on the 13th Floor is preparing to move out of the Governor’s Mansion, where he has been house-sitting since Governor Pataki moved to Iowa several months ago. He is deeply saddened by the departure of Pataki, whose middle name is “Elmer,” because it will probably be a long time before anyone with Elmer as any part of his (or her) name will hold high office again in New York. He recently found a bug in his office but couldn’t figure out which elected official it belonged to.
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