NEW YORK — The drama of the past year played out locally in big civic and social changes: surprise political upsets and reversals, decent reputations gone bad and bad reputations gone much worse. Here, a highly subjective (and in some cases exaggerated) list of who and what seemed to morph into someone or something else.
When Bill de Blasio Became Donald Trump (*Wait, What?)
Let’s just say from the outset that we are not 100 percent serious when we suggest that the liberal mayor of New York City appeared indistinguishable from the divisively nationalist, immigrant-unfriendly 45th president of the United States. But certain Trumpian characteristics in the mayor revealed themselves this year so much so that The New York Post featured a picture of him on its cover with a photoshopped head of orange hair and the line, “Don Blasio.” The catalyst for this new impression was the court-ordered release of thousands of pages of emails from his administration showing the mayor to be aggressive, insecure and deeply contemptuous of a press corps he believes has covered him unfairly. Also, he uses all caps sometimes. Also, he loves real estate developers.
When Sheryl Sandberg Became Ayn Rand
Many women in New York’s pop intellectual and publishing communities embraced Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” when it came out a few years ago. Its simple advice for female empowerment: Women need to just buck up and assert themselves if they wanted more from the patriarchy. For some of us — I will say smugly — that did not pass the feminism smell test.
The #MeToo movement should have confirmed to any doubters that women weren’t the problem — social structures were the problem. But it wasn’t until damaging reports of Sandberg’s role in subverting democracy at Facebook and selling out its users that her dethroning was complete, and that it was clear that someone so committed to greed and corporate narcissism was not going to lead American women to a better place. On her book tour, Michelle Obama called the Lean In movement a “lie.”
When an Unknown Bartender Became a Che Guevara T-Shirt
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rose from obscurity over the summer to defeat the longtime incumbent Joseph Crowley in the Democratic primary to represent the city’s 14th congressional district. But that is easily the dullest and least relevant way to describe her change of fortune. On the left, she has become a symbol of working-class grievance, of an urban youth class mired in student debt and locked out of domestic comforts by a national housing crisis. On the right, she has become a lightning rod for those who fear and loathe a rising progressive energy. Is she weak on policy? Does it matter? She is leading an emotionally charged movement.
When Andrew Cuomo Became the Bartender Who Became the Che Guevara T-Shirt
More than any other year, this was the one in which the governor really wanted you to believe that he had become a firebrand left-of-center liberal. Challenged by Cynthia Nixon in the Democratic primary, he started to adopt her positions on the legalization of pot, the evil of plastic bags, the need for less punishing teacher evaluations and so on. Is he really looking like Ocasio-Cortez? Not when he is wearing a windbreaker roaming through a subway tunnel in Canarsie, but he has proposed a Green New Deal just as she has, and he is sounding like he wants to be a revolutionary.
When the New York City Housing Authority Became the Ultimate Slumlord
In June, the federal government delivered a brutal rebuke to the nation’s biggest public housing authority, accusing it of gross mismanagement and failure to provide a safe living environment for residents, especially children who had been exposed to lead paint. The city was supposed to move quickly making repairs; it didn’t. Reports of squalid conditions continue, and in one complex, thousands of residents didn’t have heat or hot water on Thanksgiving.
When Eric Schneiderman Became Ike Turner
Previously regarded as a friend to feminists, the New York attorney general was accused of beating up several former girlfriends, in an article in The New Yorker, and he resigned immediately after it appeared. His degradations followed the familiar narrative of domestic violence: His assaults were accompanied by his cruel assessments of the women he was dating. Initially he insisted that everything that transpired with these women was consensual. It was only after a special prosecutor determined that limitations in the law made it impossible to level criminal charges that Schneiderman accepted “full” responsibility for his conduct and committed to “making amends.”
When Amazon Became Philip Morris
So it turned out that Amazon was more or less just kidding when it solicited proposals from cities around the country hoping to be home to the company’s second headquarters. The company affirmed its elitist commitments when it chose to locate in New York and suburban Washington over, say, Detroit or Pittsburgh. And while that was maddening enough to plenty of urbanists, many New Yorkers have greeted the impending arrival of Amazon with a rage toward the company that was not necessarily foreseeable. Amazon’s encroachment into Queens, where the terror is that it will drive housing prices up even further and deny jobs to the people who really need them, has made the retailer the brightest new emblem of corporate malevolence.
When Juul Became Crack
As rates of drug and alcohol use have declined among adolescents for years, Juul became the beloved vice of teenagers across the city and around the country. The company, which has more than 70 percent of the e-cigarette market in the United States, was supposed to help grown-ups quit conventional cigarettes. Instead, the easily concealable and cool-looking vaping device has spurred a nicotine addiction among young people who had never smoked. All along, the company — disingenuously, it would seem — maintained that this was not its intent. And yet Juul offered its product in flavors like Crème Brûlée and something akin to Froot Loops, unlikely to appeal to anyone old enough to vote.
When Rudy Giuliani Became Alex Jones
If you enter “Rudy Giuliani” and “unhinged” into Google, you get a lot of entries. Had Giuliani stayed out of the Trump scrum, he would have had a decent chance at an enviable legacy in which the world would have remembered him as the strong and calming mayor presiding over New York City during 9/11. Instead he went full throttle into his role as the president’s cable-news consigliere, giving interviews so erratic and illogical that even Fox News has been confounded.
When New York Became Peoria
This is not a delusional post about how a slightly softened real estate market has turned the city into a quaint center of simplicity. No; this is a post about the ways in which New Yorkers, who famously strain themselves not to look twice at celebrities and pretend to disregard their power, went bonkers over the mysterious arrival of a Mandarin duck in Central Park. Suddenly, everyone was Ron Galella, desperate for a picture and obsessed with where this gorgeous patchwork quilt of a creature would show up next.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.