After an insult to the mayor, Quinn storms out of a 'living wage' press conference
Quinn, before she left. Dana Rubinstein
1:20 pm Apr. 30, 20124
After a "living wage" supporter called Mayor Michael Bloomberg a "pharaoh," Council Speaker Christine Quinn stormed away from a press conference.
Quinn had just finished introducing all of the councilmembers in attendance at the event, which had been called to hail an imminent vote on the living wage legislation she helped broker, in defiance of the Bloomberg administration's wishes, when one of the people standing in the background yelled, "Pharaoh Bloomberg!"
Quinn, who had been preparing to begin her remarks, turned around and said, "That's not appropriate."
"In democracy, people have the right to have different views and they do not, we do not, have the right to then call them names," she said. "So I would just ask, if that's what this press conference is about, I'll go right back inside and continue the work of business."
Then she asked for an apology, said she was "not gonna participate in name calling," and stormed away.
The press conference continued without her.
Asked afterward why he had yelled, the living-wage supporter, a volunteer and Co-op City resident named Carlos Pacheco, said, "Why? Because, they were political leaders in Egypt and they had the little people build their pyramids and today we can relate to that."
Asked why he thought Quinn left, he said, "Well, I think she left because she was never really a part of the cause .... She was playing her politics."
At a separate press availability shortly afterward, Quinn opened by saying, "Let me be clear. I couldn't disagree with Mayor Bloomberg more on the substance as it relates to the living wage bill."
"But this is not democracy, calling people names you don't agree with."
WAIT... I thought that was a part of democracy: freely speaking what you believe.
Speaker Quinn, appallingly, has it exactly wrong. In a democracy people ARE allowed to call other people names.
In my view, people yelling out insults is not democracy. If it's a press conference, let the press ask questions and receive answers.
Yeah I think we need more name calling, but more INTELLIGENT name calling (that means you Pacheco you dipsh*t)
We need to break down these politicians. Yoko Ono has a piece in the Whitney museum talking about how politicians should crawl through clown doors before meetings to put them in the correct head space, and I couldn't agree more.
I agree with Quinn that un-intelligent name-calling is not necessarily constructive (because it usually has little intrinsic meaning and thus confuses people who don't fully understand the context), but storming out of a press conference that you might be expected to divulge information or political opinions at is also not constructive.
Politicians have an obligation to serve the public, and should get used to public scrutiny in all its (sometimes ugly) forms.