Yesterday, New York magazine's profile of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn made a splash—about Mayor Bloomberg. Bloomberg was at a swank Upper East Side party, staring at a woman in a tight dress, and said in front of reporter Jonathan Van Meter, "Look at the ass on her," launching at least three Photoshops.
While Bloomberg's staff hasn't commented about it yet, a source tells the Daily News, "Anyone who knows Mike knows this is exactly the way he kibitzes privately. He has [a] 1950s sense of humor about women which is neither malicious nor deniable. Everybody knows that." But Joyce Purnick, who wrote a book about him, gave the News another opinion, "It was part of his Wall Street past and his businessman past. He used to use salty language quite often, even in his early days as mayor, but I thought it was something he got over. I would be surprised if he was still using that kind of language in public."
Capital New York's Azi Paybarah notes, "It just isn't a new thing for Bloomberg to talk like this, and the mayor's opponents have never succeeded in making his propensity for such remarks into a meaningful issue," and lists other naughty Bloombergisms like "I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. It's like a wet dream" and how he said about an attractive woman in the bullpen "nice tits."
At any rate, no one remembers anything in the Quinn profile except for the Bloomberg moments, because basically he's become Larry David (start at 1:15):
