How’m I Dying?

(Props to Greg)

 

Or

How'd I Do?

Ed Koch, who started the conversion of New York’s Time Square from crime-ridden hellhole to tourist-infested hellhole, has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 88. In the 1980s, the only thing New Yorkers could agree about more than their smug and undeserved sense of superiority was Koch, as the lifelong Democrat won re-election in 1981 with 75% of the vote and 78% in 1985. Like most politicians of the 1980s, he was embarrassingly negligent in recognizing and reacting to the AIDS epidemic. Given the tabloid speculation about his own sexuality, this could have been either a betrayal or a means to avoid further scrutiny of it. In any event, can having fewer New Yorkers ever really be considered a bad thing? When the New York Giants won the Super Bowl in 1986, he refused to accord them the honor of a ticker tape parade because the team had moved to (and paid taxes in) New Jersey, declaring, "If they want a parade, let them parade in front of the oil drums in Moonachie."