Bloomberg's Change Of Life

Who would have thought that the man that Mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsed to be his successor could have changed so much in so short a time? On the other hand, maybe he didn't change at all. Maybe he just came out of the closet. We had high hopes for Michael Bloomberg when the lifelong Democrat joined the Republican Party. True, he did it in part to avoid a primary fight, but we thought that he had many redeeming qualities. Rudy's imprimatur sealed the deal.

Unfortunately, in the last few years, Bloomy's undergone a change of life that's rendered him almost unrecognizable. It began with his studied rejection of President Bush at the GOP convention. It continued with his crusade against the Second Amendment. It raced ahead with his battle to ban smoking, and raise tobacco taxes on the people who could least afford them: the poor and working classes.

It evolved with his loony campaign to stop the use of trans fats in fast food. It rumbled along with his obsession with limiting the use of salt. And his crazed efforts to force restaurants to post calorie counts, and his power-crazed health commissioner's desire to track down diabetics who don't take their insulin. Not to mention his party's proposal to tax sugary soda, which is, plainly speaking, a penalty on the pleasingly plump.

In short, Bloomy not only tossed the GOP in the gutter, he went over to the politically correct side. Never mind that fake, phony, feckless local Republicans offered him a line so he could trample on term limits and keep Gracie Mansion in his deep pockets. He's turned out to be every thinking person's worst nightmare: a loony liberal. And there's no end in sight. What's next? Fines for untrimmed fingernails? They could be dangerous. Misdemeanors for bad haircuts? They could pose a distraction and cause traffic accidents. Jail time for sloppy attire? It undermines the morale of the community.

We could on, but will not take up any more of your precious time with our rant. We know you need to hold down that third job in order to pay the water bill and keep the UFT, the MTA, and other fat-cat unions in clover. For the time being, we'll concern ourselves with hizzoner's Stalinist smoke ban.

For the record, we do not smoke. We never have. We think that people who smoke do so at their own risk. However, we think that folks have a right to puff away. Hence, our objections to the Smoke Stasi are grounded in pure libertarian philosophy.

Face it: It's a fact of life that liberals and Democrats have become the thing they feared most. They're the new fascists. They're obsessed with telling everyone else how to think. They're the new conformists. They pretend to bow to the god of diversity, but their concept of difference is no more than skin-deep. Groupthink is their game and woe betide the true individualist.

They pretend to be for choice, but they won't let you decide where to send your children to school, what kind of car you can drive, whether to defend yourself with a gun, and what jokes you can laugh at. They also decide what groups are more equal than others, which means they dictate when and where you can smoke, if you can still afford the habit, because smokers are strictly on the outs with the P.C. crowd.

Now, Bloomberg has emerged from their ranks. He's hit the ground running. He's carrying their torch. He's their creature. He's their pet monster. And the craven press and broadcast industry are with him every step of the way. For all the criticism that he's received over breaking his pledge on term limits, and his battle with the leftist teachers union, he's still demonstrably, unequivocally, unashamedly P.C. How sickening! How sad!

Back in the day, there were laws on the books that allowed for smoking and nonsmoking sections in bars and restaurants. Those same laws allowed wait staff to choose the environment they preferred. Mandated air cleaners made for a perfectly pure atmosphere. But the politically correct were not satisfied. They needed to show the "sheeple" that they were little dictators, and that whatever they wanted was going to be enforced!

The smoke posse force people out onto the sidewalks in the dead of winter. The Smoke Stasi threaten to criminalize smoking in parks and on beaches. They want to make it a crime to light up in your own home. Who knows when this P.C. insanity will end?

In George Orwell's nightmarish novel, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," Winston Smith writes in his diary: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four." At the end of the dystopian fantasy, O'Brien, the Inner Party's grand inquisitor of thought-crimes, tortures the hapless Smith into declaring that he sees five fingers when, in fact, he sees four: "Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once."

In other words, the answer to the question: "How much is two plus two?" is: "Whatever the party says it is." Don't laugh. That day may come yet.