There are plenty of people worthy of mockery in politics right now. As demonstrated in South Park, all of the late-night shows and Saturday Night Live, Trump and his cabal of evil and weird-looking cronies provide plenty of comedic fodder. But as those shows have also shown, it’s hard to strike the balance between laughing at these people and understanding the gravity of their depravity. Needless to say, it’s not a lighthearted “ha-ha.”
Plus, people like Pam Bondi have shown how easy it is to neuter jokes when they lean in to them. Then all you’ve done is give evil people airtime. But there’s one Republican out there who poses much, much, much less of a risk of wielding his eccentricities and terrible politics as a tool to harm the public. That man is New York Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa.
Don’t Miss
For those unfamiliar with NYC metro politics, Sliwa is a stalwart fixture for oddness. In 1977, he started a street safety group to monitor the then-genuinely out-of-control crime plaguing the city. This group became the Guardian Angles, known for their red berets and being unarmed except for their required training in martial arts. While trying to drum up publicity for his group, Sliwa later admitted he staged six separate incidents to gain media attention.
But that isn’t even the most notable part of Sliwa’s long and storied NYC career. Perhaps the most unbelievable detail in his CV is his survival of a mafia hit. He was kidnapped in a taxi and shot twice by the mob in the ‘90s. John A. Gotti, the son of John Gotti, was eventually charged with Sliwa’s attempted murder.
In terms of the upcoming mayoral race, Sliwa first ran for the position back in 2021 as the Republican candidate against now-mayor Eric Adams. And while he’s been on record for decades saying absolutely bonkers stuff — and has been the punchline many times in New York political circles — his importance in the race against Democratic pick Zohran Mamdani and independent Andrew Cuomo (who lost the Dem primary to Mamdani) has been growing. This relevancy has given Sliwa more airtime than ever, and in the absence of any real risk of Sliwa obtaining any significant political power, he’s been providing endless entertainment.
There’s even a meme format that’s emerged to capture Sliwa’s absolutely unbelievable media presence. It goes like this:
There are many, many iterations of it:
But Sliwa doesn’t need the structure of a meme in order to deliver hits. The man is a certified quote machine. When asked by reporters if he would work for Andrew Cuomo as mayor, this was his response: “Remember the scene in Braveheart: Mel Gibson, at the end, when the executioner was impaling him? If, all of the sudden, the executioner would have stopped — and I was on that gurney — and said, ‘Hey, you can work for Mayor Andrew Cuomo,’ I would say, ‘Finish the job. Impale me.’”
That’s the kind of flair for the dramatics that can’t be ignored — at least online. As one person pointed out, the man has the ability to derail a debate and turn it into an I Think You Should Leave sketch.
As you can see from his full-throated support of Christopher Columbus statues, Sliwa isn’t a man we should be taking seriously. He isn’t a man we should allow to hold public office. But a man who says that Cuomo’s legacy is “slapping fannies and killing grannies” is a man I’d like to keep around as some sort of political court jester.
Let’s just make sure we never elect him. I don’t want to see what a mayoral cabinet staffed by cats does to New York City, even if the thought amuses me. Maybe we can hire him to make fun of Andrew Cuomo full-time?
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: feeds.feedburner.com
