There have been a lot of rumors lately about New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Chief among these has been rumors that de Blasio and his wife are regular marijuana users. For his part, de Blasio said “I haven’t smoked marijuana since I was at NYU.” He denied rumors that he has more recently smoked the plant at Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence But now it turns out that these rumors have been circulated by de Blasio’s security detail and people they are closely connected with in the New York City Police Department. The rumors state that de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, smoke in either their Park Slope rowhouse as well as a secluded section of Prospect Park. They have also stated that after de Blasio became mayor, the two began smoking at Gracie Mansion. In a recent Politico article addressing some of these rumors, it was said that “In 2013 de Blasio’s team was even convinced that members of his police detail were eavesdropping on his private conversations in his city-assigned car.” A piece about this on Gawker sums up why the NYPD would have an ulterior motive to make up things like this: The fact that these rumors are coming from cops—whose racist stop-and-frisk policy de Blasio railed against during the mayoral election—does not necessarily make them untrue, or unworthy of more reporting. It would be indisputably newsworthy if the mayor of New York City smokes marijuana while the city he oversees continues to arrest people of color over small quantities of cannabis. It would be indisputably newsworthy, too, if he had repeatedly misled the public about his consumption of marijuana. It is equally obvious, however, that N.Y.P.D. officials want to undermine and embarrass the de Blasio administration in any way they can—such as spreading rumors about the mayor’s weed habit—in order to deflect and distract the public from their department’s well-documented brutality. So when you hear about de Blasio smoking pot, keep in mind who wants you to hear about it, and why.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 03:43:23 +0000
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