Throwing New York City To The Rats
The New York Post is bashing the New York City Health Department for spending their time (and money) going after imaginary threats like trans fats while allowing the city to go to the rats. We suspect someone at the Post reads the Crabitat, since we've been mentioning that little problem ever since the rat races in Greenwich Village made the news.
March 2, 2007 — Rats! New York City has become a national laughingstock.
Indeed, while Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden has kept busy as a beaver designing new paradigms for public health - databanks for diabetics and trans-fatless fast food - the rats have been running amok.
That's rats as in Rattus norvegicus - a legendary dispenser of disgusting diseases and the bane of traditional practitioners of public health for centuries.
Video footage of Rattus - a whole herd of them - flitting about a Village fast-food joint made national news last week.
To wit:
"How many of you folks were affected by the big stock market plunge yesterday?" David Letterman asked Wednesday night. "Four hundred points. The stock market dropped 400 points. And big corporations were really, really affected by it. As a matter of fact, Taco Bell had to lay off 300 rats."
Funny.
If the joke were on, say, Boston.
Alas, it was on Gotham - and on Frieden, as well.
While he's been hard at work redefining what constitutes "public health" - think Nanny State on steroids - the city's rat detectives have been asleep at the switch.
We believe that it is time for Commissioner Frieden to take aggressive action on this issue. To start with, we strongly suggest they hire someone with more credibility than the commissioner has at the moment to address the rat problem.
"There are no rats in New York City."
By Quilly Mammoth, Saturday, 3 March , 2007 @ 10:14 am
LOL! Great photo work, Gaius.
By jpe, Sunday, 4 March , 2007 @ 1:21 pm
Heh.