Source: Notablog
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
“I’m one of those born and bred New Yorkers who finds it maddening to read the litany of familiar right-wing attacks on my hometown, which typically intensify during election cycles. It’s so predictable that I can practically check off all the right-wing talking points in my sleep. Anytime I hear the phrase ‘New York values,’ for example, I know that it’s a code word. No, not for ‘rude,’, ‘brash,’ or ‘loud.’ It’s hurled as an epithet and it’s meant to disparage New Yorker’s tolerance — — nay, embrace — of difference. Most Gotham dwellers have a cosmopolitan ‘live and let live’ perspective on the world and for this, they are routinely excoriated. But since the pandemic and the protests and riots that followed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, right-wingers have been harping on New York’s ‘lawlessness.’” (05/22/23)