New York's improbable contribution to the Republican presidential race achieved another notable low with the faux pizza dinner between Donald Trump and Sarah Palin. The two commoners sat down at Famiglia's, a pizza chain that has been featured on Trump's Celebrity Apprentice TV show.
We may not be producing real candidates but we're triumphing in the synthesis of politics and reality TV.
The pizza parley came on the third day of Palin's bogus bus trip to patriotic places like Gettysburg and Philadephia's Liberty Bell. These red, white and blue sites will now evidently include Trump's ghastly Manhattan apartment (rightly compared to one of Saddam Hussein's palaces) where the twosome met before limousining to the Times Square outlet of the publicity-hungry pizza franchise.
Anyone who thought New York's role in the GOP presidential race ended with the termination of Trump's phony-baloney candidacy was obviously wrong.
No sooner had the failed casino operator bid adieu to the contest when Old 9/11, Rudy Giuliani, sprung to life by again declaring that he was still considering a run. Giuliani homeboy Peter King also got into the act. The Muslim-friendly Long Island congressman said he might get into the race should America's former mayor falter for any reason.
As if this wasn't enough, former New York Gov. George Pataki timidly tossed his bland gray hat in the vague general direction of the ring.
"I'm not running now. But we'll see what happens over the course of the next month," New York's former governor told the New Hampshire Union Leader.
Pataki just happened to be in New Hampshire, talking about the fiscal responsibility in his capacity as chairman of No American Debt, a group whose purpose seems to be producing TV commercials featuring Pataki's voice criticizing Barack Obama, and running them in early-primary states.
That wait-and-see stance is very much in Pataki's character. Don't rush things. Calm is this man's defining character trait. A calm so deep, it might almost be mistaken for lethargy.
It is in great part due to the Pataki calm that the reconstruction of Ground Zero has been preceding at such a restful pace. Ten years after 9/11, we're still mixing cement.
And wait! There's more. While Trump was feeding Palin celebrity pizza, Iowa Republicans were in New Jersey begging Gov. Chris Christie to get into the race, despite the fact that Christie has already declared himself to be unready and the residents of his home state have declared him to be unpopular.
Christie has said that his children are too young to be subjected to a presidential campaign, and this is one guy who does not let politics get in the way of his family. Just the other day, the fiscal conservative used a state helicopter to travel to his son's baseball game. And it will be a long time before we forget that Christie stayed at Disney World last winter when New Jersey was hit by a paralyzing Christmas blizzard. ("I had a great five days with my children. I promised (them) that," the governor said.)
While it's true New York has yet to produce promising presidential material, you have to admit it'd make a great TV series. Maybe it already is.