De Blasio Performs Dramatic Reading of The Onion’s Blizzard Report
So the Mayor got a lot of flak for freaking out about #Juno, which rather than turning in to Blizzardocalypse 2k15 , ended up being what’s pretty much an average January day for the Midwest. And though the Governor reportedly gave the Mayor no more than 15 minutes notice before announcing that public transportation would shut down at 11 on Monday, de Blasio’s storm Tweets and speeches were rather melodramatic, at least in retrospect.
On Sunday, the Mayor warned New Yorkers that “we are facing most likely one of the largest snowstorms in the history of this city.” We know now that, like, pshhh. But The Onion, of course, was on that shit immediately, calling the Mayor’s bluff and that of every other city and state official within reaching distance of a microphone or keyboard.
The Onion quotes a (fictional, duh) speech by Mayor de Blasio: “The furious hoarfrost bearing down upon us knows neither mercy nor reason, and all within the five boroughs will perish, cowering in their brittle dwellings.”
Yikes, but tbh it wasn’t that far off. De Blasio was well aware of this, and took a moment yesterday to perform a dramatic reading from THe Onion‘s piece, which he has since proudly shared via social media. The Mayor admitted that the article was “so brilliant, I just had to do a reading.”
In which I perform a dramatic reading of The Onion: http://t.co/AGAy7mPIJA
— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) January 28, 2015
But while reserving a sense of humor for #Juno, the Mayor defended his doomsday predictions: “My job as the leader is to make decisions and I will always err on the side of safety and caution.” After all, he wasn’t the only one in a panic–the Governor and several lawmakers joined de Blasio in emphasizing the ferocity of the storm, and NYPD officers snatched 74 rabbits from a Gowanus resident and probable hoarder in anticipation of lethal weather. But maybe we should blame those silly meteorologists for getting it wrong–something that, like, never happens. And look, the National Weather Service even admitted such storms are “very challenging to predict.”
Our consensus? Everyone quit whining, economists are reportedly saying that, yeah, our adult snow day was pretty expensive, but New York City being supremely good at this whole capitalism thing will recover quickly. Plus most of us got a day to sit around in our PJs and pour whiskey instead of creamer into our coffee, and for everyone who couldn’t leave work early on Monday night, well, we don’t exactly know what happened to them.