Joyce Purnick

Michael Bloomberg is coming out with a new book, to be collaborated on with Margaret Carlson, who works for him, sort of, as a columnist for Bloomberg News.  read more »

When Michael Bloomberg took a shot at nameless "xenophobic" politicians in his State of the City speech last week, some observers took it as another overt sign of his interest in running for President.

But New York Times editor and writer Joyce Purnick, who knows something about reading Bloomberg, says it's actually just the opposite.

“Immigration is the third rail of American politics, right?" she said yesterday during an appearance on NY1’s NY-Close Up. "If he were really serious about running for President, there’s no way he could say what he said about immigration.

More after the jump.  read more »

Columnists ahoy! The Times' Joyce Purnick and the Post's Andrea Peyser confabbed briefly in a house phone alcove on the 36th floor of the Mandarin Oriental, the north tower of the Mordor that is the Time Warner Center. More and more press arrived--Maggie Haberman, Ben Smith, that tall annoyed blonde from local 4--not for the lure of a charity benefit for K.I.D.S., but for Barack Obama.

Around 8 p.m. last night, the Senator delivered half an hour of a not entirely committed speech, one which was marked by his usual mistake of being unwilling to arrange his text with places for an audience to applaud.

This time, he forewent his Martin Luther King, Jr., references for a story about Bobby Kennedy in Mississippi. The Senator, for all his talk about the death of baby boomer politics, only refers to the highlights of the 60's as a moral.

At the end he trailed off, and the press horded into a back room to briefly grill him.

"I was supposed to be here all day and have a bunch of meetings," Senator Obama said after--but they'd been cancelled, or at least postponed. "I circled and circled around Manhattan for a while," he said. How much longer will the Senator's vow to only fly commercial last?

According to his spokesfella, Tommy Vietor, he was departing immediately afterwards. This would turn out to be not exactly true.

Peyser, in the front row, got off the first question in the hastily assembled presser in the hotel's Lotus room. Imagine the most sarcastic tone of voice possible: "Have you met with Hillary Clinton while you're in town?" He had not. Shortly thereafter, the lights, overloaded by camera drain, went out. "It's Hillary," Peyser told the Senator. "She's got her finger on the switch."

-- Choire Sicha

Joyce Purnick notes today (subscription required) how the last-minute endorsement by Mayor and Governor for a Yankee Metro-North station (paid for by M.T.A. taxpayers and riders) was all that was needed to convince some pols to vote yes for Yankee Stadium. But wasn't that a card Bloomberg and Pataki had been keeping up their sleeve all along until the opportune moment?

At times, that card did get shown, but no one remembers.

Last June in the Daily News, just before the official unveiling, T.J. Quinn, citing unnamed sources, reported:

The state and city will spend up to $300 million to replace and enhance park land that will be lost to the new site, build new parking structures, extend the subway platform, build a Metro-North station and build up the Bronx waterfront. (Archive fee.)

Two weeks later, the News reported that the new station, along with the subway improvements, would cost $90 million. (Another archive fee.) Now, Yankee fan Adolfo Carrion is saying the Metro-North station would cost but $30-40 million. Ah, thank goodness for deflation.

-Matthew Schuerman UPDATE: The Metro-North station was actually part of the Borough President's plan for the area. The final environmental impact statement for the stadium indicates the Mayor supported the idea back in February when it came out :

[A]lthough a new Metro-North station is not part of the proposed project, the City and the Yankees support the construction of the proposed Metro-North Yankee Stadium station, and the proposed project has been developed so as not to preclude the future construction of a new station. (p. 541)

The re-emergence this week of the obscure, late former City Council Majority Leader Tom Cuite may be instructive for politicians balancing difficult gay rights positions with their legacies.

Cuite probably didn't think he'd be remembered three decades later for opposing a gay rights bill. But it turns out that it's the only thing he's remembered for, here, here, and here, and indirectly in a walled-off Joyce Purnick column. About half the "Tom Cuite" hits on Google focus on the bill.  read more »

It's a case study in being on the historically "wrong" side of a civil rights issue. And while impossible to predict, it's not inconceivable that, say, Chuck Schumer's vote for the Defense of Marriage Act will be one of very few things people know about him in 50 years.

Correction: Cuite wasn't the elected council president, the equivalent of public advocate. He was the legislative leader.

Thinking about the continuing Freddy "freefall," as Shelly Silver had it this morning, one wise observer made the following point to us:

"This is Al Sharpton's town, and you're either with him or against him," he said. "You can't have it both ways. That's what Mark Green learned in 2001, and what Freddy's learning now."  read more »

Also today, Joyce Purnick dares to suggest that racial politics might be rather complicated. She thinks black politicians are shying away from Freddy because Billy Thompson is their horse. We don't entirely disagree, but think that less calculated factors -- longstanding enmities, the usual competition between groups -- are also relevant.

On a balmy summer afternoon in 1991, Shelly Friedman was strolling the boardwalk in Brighton Beach w  read more »

Joyce Purnick announced the end of her two-year run as editor of The Metro Section of The New York T  read more »

Public Lives, The New York Times ' "non-gossip gossip column," as executive editor Joseph Lelyveld p  read more »

The ballfields I stroll across on my way home from work were crowded with 6-year-olds the other day.  read more »