OPINION: The Big Apple begs for relevance

April 18, 2016 By Ben Krull For Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Ben Krull is a New York City-based family law attorney and freelance writer. Photo courtesy of Ben Krull

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Dear Republicans,

As a New Yorker, I am used to living in the city with the best restaurants, tallest buildings and most famous museums. But every four years we become an afterthought.

We have to suffer the indignity of seeing the media flock to Podunk, Ohio and Nowheresville, Florida, to gauge the voting preferences of yokel locals who have never tasted a decent bagel. But this election year, the Democrats are sure to nominate a New Yorker (Bernie may have abandoned us, but he still speaks Brooklynese, so we’ll claim him), and if you Republicans do the same we will be a battleground state!

Instead of doing opinion surveys of NASCAR-obsessed gun owners, pollsters will conduct focus groups of kale-eating hipsters from Brooklyn. New York values will replace family values on the campaign trail (sorry Sen. Cruz), and we will no longer have to Google “negative political ads” to see negative political ads. They will appear unsolicited on our local TV channels.

We deserve a turn in the campaign spotlight. After all, we’ve given the country Elliot Spitzer and his prostitutes, Anthony Weiner’s bare-chested tweets and a congressman threatening to throw a reporter off a balcony.

And at the risk of sounding crass, our hedge fund managers and real estate developers have been funding your campaign entertainment for years. How would you feel if you paid for the production of a soap opera you didn’t get to see?

Just give us a chance and the nation won’t be disappointed. With more elected officials in jail than any place east of Chicago, we know how to do seamy politics. The race-baiting Al Sharpton will replace the gay-bashing Rev Jerry Fawell Jr.; our pugnacious Gov. Cuomo will out-bully Trump’s pugnacious Chris Christie; our tabloid headlines will destroy reputations more thoroughly than the most thorough opposition research.

And we have all the props needed to make the mayhem of professional wrestling look amateurish. We have more transgender people than New Hampshire, more undocumented immigrants (that’s “illegals” for you Republicans) than Pennsylvania, more abortion clinics than Indiana. For the love of de Blasio, Occupy Wall Street started right here on Wall Street!

Imagine Sarah Palin holding a press conference at The Museum of Sex, denouncing Hillary as an enabler of her husband, or Alec Baldwin leading a profanity-laced march to Trump Tower, to protest The Donald’s incivility. I promise we will make “House of Cards” look like a Disney Channel show.

A campaign that never seems to end deserves a city that never sleeps. It deserves ornery voters, rude campaign volunteers, and an abrasive press corps.

I know you are excited about the prospect of a brokered convention. But after four days of cheap thrills, you’ll be stuck for the entire fall with a Texas-twanging hick, or a boring Midwesterner who couldn’t have a sex-scandal even if Trump had one of his Miss Universe contestants proposition him.

No matter what you Republicans decide, I take solace in knowing that after Election Day, order will be restored to the universe. The world will once-again revolve around the Big Apple, with nobody having to think about Delphos, Ohio; Cokedale, Colorado; or Ackley, Iowa unless they live there.