Editor's Note | A centerpiece of the Bush campaign was their claim
that Bush was the best man to keep America safe from another terrorist
attack. It is worthwhile to note, therefore, the reaction of the city of
New York to the election results on Tuesday. This great city, which
absorbed the horrific blow of 9/11, did not think Bush was the right man
for the job. - wrp
A
Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America
By Joseph Berger
The New York Times
Thursday 04 November 2004
Striking a characteristic New York pose near Lincoln
Center yesterday, Beverly Camhe clutched three morning newspapers to her
chest while balancing a large latte and talked about how disconsolate she
was to realize that not only had her candidate, John Kerry, lost but that
she and her city were so out of step with the rest of the country.
"Do you know how I described New York to my European friends?" she
said. "New York is an island off the coast of Europe."
Like Ms. Camhe, a film producer, three of every four
voters in New York City gave Mr. Kerry their vote, a starkly different choice
from the rest of the nation. So they awoke yesterday with something of a woozy
existential hangover and had to confront once again how much of a 51st State
they are, different in their sensibilities, lifestyles and polyglot texture from
most of America. The election seemed to reverse the perspective of the famous
Saul Steinberg cartoon, with much of the land mass of America now in the foreground
and New York a tiny, distant and irrelevant dot.
Some New Yorkers, like Meredith Hackett, a 25-year-old
barmaid in Brooklyn, said they didn't even know any people who had voted for
President Bush. (In both Manhattan and the Bronx, Mr. Bush received 16.7
percent of the vote.) Others spoke of a feeling of isolation from their
fellow Americans, a sense that perhaps Middle America doesn't care as
much about New York and its animating concerns as it seemed to in the
weeks immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center.
"Everybody seems to hate us these days," said Zito Joseph, a
63-year-old retired psychiatrist. "None of the people who are likely to
be hit by a terrorist attack voted for Bush. But the heartland people
seemed to be saying, 'We're not affected by it if there would be another
terrorist attack.' "
City residents talked about this chasm between outlooks
with characteristic New York bluntness.
Dr. Joseph, a bearded, broad-shouldered man with silken gray hair,
was sharing coffee and cigarettes with his fellow dog walker, Roberta
Kimmel Cohn, at an outdoor table outside the hole-in-the-wall Breadsoul
Cafe near Lincoln Center. The site was almost a cliché corner of
cosmopolitan Manhattan, with a newsstand next door selling French and
Italian newspapers and, a bit farther down, the Lincoln Plaza theater
showing foreign movies.
"I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and
shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland," Dr.
Joseph said. "This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a
very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country -
in the heartland."
"New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of
consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one
mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for
us," he said.
His friend, Ms. Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art,
contended that New Yorkers were not as fooled by Mr. Bush's statements
as other Americans might be. "New Yorkers are savvy," she said. "We have
street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what
their friends say."
"They're very 1950's," she said of Midwesterners. "When
I go back there, I feel I'm in a time warp."
Dr. Joseph acknowledged that such attitudes could feed
into the perception that New Yorkers are cultural elitists, but he didn't
apologize for it.
"People who are more competitive and proficient at what they do
tend to gravitate toward cities," he said.
Like those in the rest of the country, New Yorkers stayed
up late watching the results, and some went to bed with a glimmer of hope that
Mr. Kerry might yet find victory in some fortuitous combination of battleground
states. But they awoke to reality. Some politically conscious children were disheartened
- or sleepy - enough to ask parents if they could stay home. But even grownups
were unnerved.
"To paraphrase our current president, I'm in shock and awe," said
Keithe Sales, a 58-year-old former publishing administrator walking a
dog near Central Park. He said he and friends shared a feeling of
"disempowerment" as a result of the country's choice of President Bush.
"There is a feeling of 'What do I have to do to get this man out of
office?'''
In downtown Brooklyn, J. J. Murphy, 34, a teacher, said
that Mr. Kerry's loss underscored the geographic divide between the Northeast
and the rest of the country. He harked back to Reconstruction to help
explain his point.
"One thing Clinton and Gore had going for them was they were from
the South," he said. "There's a lot of resentment toward the Northeast
carpetbagger stereotype, and Kerry fit right in to that."
Mr. Murphy said he understood why Mr. Bush appealed
to Southerners in a way that he did not appeal to New Yorkers.
"Even though Bush isn't one of them - he's a son of privilege - he
comes off as just a good old boy," Mr. Murphy said.
Pondering the disparity, Bret Adams, a 33-year-old computer
network administrator in Rego Park, Queens, said, "I think a lot of the
country sees New York as a wild and crazy place, where these things like
the war protests happen."
Ms. Camhe, the film producer, frequents Elaine's restaurant
with friends and spends many mornings on a bench in Central Park talking
politics with homeless people with whom she's become acquainted. She
spent part of Tuesday knocking on doors in Pennsylvania to rustle up
Kerry votes then returned to Manhattan to attend an election-night party
thrown by Miramax's chairman, Harvey Weinstein, at The Palm. Ms. Camhe
was also up much of the night talking to a son in California who was
depressed at the election results.
When it became clear yesterday morning that the outlook
for a Kerry squeaker was a mirage, she was unable to eat breakfast. Her
doorman on Central Park West gave her a consoling hug. Then a friend
buying coffee along with her said she had just heard a report on
television that Mr. Kerry had conceded and tears welled in Ms. Camhe's eyes.
Ms. Camhe explained the habits and beliefs of those
dwelling in the heartland like an anthropologist.
"What's different about New York City is it tends to bring people
together and so we can't ignore each others' dreams and values and it
creates a much more inclusive consciousness," she said. "When you're in
a more isolated environment, you're more susceptible to some ideology
that's imposed on you."
As an example, Ms. Camhe offered the different attitudes
New Yorkers may have about social issues like gay marriage.
"We live in this marvelous diversity where we actually have gay
neighbors," she said. "They're not some vilified unknown. They're our
neighbors."
But she said that a dichotomy of outlooks was bad for
the country.
"If the heartland feels so alienated from us, then it behooves us
to wrap our arms around the heartland," she said. "We need to bring our
way of life, which is honoring diversity and having compassion for
people with different lifestyles, on a trip around the country."
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