New York Values ... Indeed

We are all now familiar with the little dust-up in the Republican debate last week regarding the topic of "New York values."  Apparently Ted Cruz had made a comment out on the stump contrasting the values of New Yorkers with those of the rest of the country, and it trickled over to the debate stage.

I'm not familiar with the original comment and its context.  What we did see was the moderator asking Cruz to explain the comment and define what he thought "New York values" actually were.  And there Cruz, had he been in a one-on-one interview, would have done fine.  He pointed out that New Yorkers were quite liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, etc., and valued money and the media.  Which, when you are talking about New York City and its environs as opposed to the whole state, is perfectly reasonable.  And he left out the attitude thing, you know, the part that makes you cringe a bit when you hear a New York accent.

Of course, Cruz was not in a one-on-one interview, he was in a presidential debate.  And standing right next to him was the uber-New Yorker, a fellow name of Donald Trump.  You may have heard of him.  Mr. Trump, of course, took the good senator to task, with a nice riposte citing the brave response of the city to the 9-11 attacks.  Well done there, Donald.

Now, the fact that the city showed remarkable resilience in the face of having two jets fly into its buildings is admirable.  But I can't say there's anything unique in the way the city responded -- had it been Seattle, say, the response would have looked different -- let's face it, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor at the time, is a one-of-a-kind fellow and certainly did a great job leading the city back.  But ultimately Seattle would have gritted its teeth and rebuilt.  So would Chicago, or Dallas, or Des Moines.  We saw how Boston responded to an attack.

But let's ask ourselves this: The same city that elected the dynamic and quintessential-New Yorker Giuliani also elected the bumbling leftist Bill De Blasio, the current mayor.  Does anyone think the response of the city would have been the same had De Blasio been mayor?  We can be pretty sure that he first would have apologized for the bad people Americans were, and that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam, blah, blah, blah.

Let's face it, New York's pride in it response to 9-11 is in large part because it had an actual leader in charge to provide what the city needed -- but would have done eventually anyway.  So one could argue that while the response to the attack -- particularly its subsequent celebration of first responders -- can be a source of pride for the city, the fact that it would then turn around and install a guy who is virulently anti-police is definitely not a source of pride.

When Ted Cruz talked about "New York values", we did indeed know what he meant.  Assuming he was talking about the city -- one could have inferred he meant the whole state, but hopefully we (and the good citizens of Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester) know better.  He meant NYC.  And he was quite right.

What it means to be from New York is probably admired by New Yorkers -- the "in your face, I'm better than you are" attitude, all the things that make people like Ted Cruz (and me) dislike the city and its "values" and distrust people we meet from there. 

I'm sure he was surprised a bit by the question; it was curious in the debate context.  But he gave the accurate answer.  In New York, everything is about today, style, status, media savviness and money.  It makes Donald Trump the person he is, and we actually take that as simply a part of his personality.  It does not mean that we'd like to be friends with someone like that, at least if he weren't rich as Croesus.

New York will tell Ted Cruz to "drop dead" before this is all over, but that's probably fine with the senator.  New Yorkers will never watch that debate exchange and ask themselves if maybe, just maybe, being as nice as people in the rest of the country are, is worth considering.

Just a thought for the day.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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