New York Values

A new low in the presidential primary debates was reached last week when candidate Ted Cruz charged that Donald Trump represents “New York values.” This was almost as a bad as when presidential candidate John Kerry was accused of looking “too French.”

New York values, claimed Cruz, are socially liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and a focus on money and media.

What Americans outside of New York in the heartland really heard was: “you are from Sodom and Gomorrah, a cesspool of perversion and depravity, where oligarchs and money changers rule the temple and the Antichrist lives in a Park Avenue cooperative apartment and vacations in wicked France and drinks wine.

The same rural prejudices animated America’s  prohibition movement in the 1920’s.

Like the phony cowpoke George W. Bush, Cruz pretends to be a rough and tough Texan. In fact, he is the product of top Eastern schools. Last week, it was revealed that a lot of his campaign finance came from Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street money lenders who are the incarnation of the rapacious New York money-changers denounced by Cruz.

Unlike the faux Texan cowboy Cruz, Trump is indeed a real New Yorker. When I was a boy, Manhattan had tough German gangs on the East Side. One knew not to go east of Third Avenue. In fact, New York was once a great German city – the world’s biggest after Berlin and Hamburg –until two world wars submerged America’s German identity. German Yorkville with its boisterous beer halls and the wonderful “Luchows” German restaurant are sadly long gone.

Trump came from this milieu.  His family moved to Queens which, with New York’s borough Brooklyn, are more populous  than primary states Iowa and New Hampshire put together.  Trump sounds and acts like he came from very middle-class Queens.

Firing back at Cruz, Trump orated about New York and 9/11, taking credit for the city’s resistance and rebound. But he blew it when he told Cruz to “go back to Canada” as if it were some sort of northern Cuba.

The United States would do well to be a bit more like Canada. Canadians are famously polite, genteel, helpful and non-violent. As the wonderful actor Peter Ustinov once quipped when asked what he thought of Toronto, Canada, he replied: “New York City….run by the Swiss!”

That would be a fine goal for both candidates rather than more guns and foreign wars.

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