Does this look racist to you?

 

Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News drew it to depict Andrew Yang, the leading candidate for mayor, emerging from the subway in Times Square.  Josh Greenman, the editorial page editor, said it was meant to suggest that there are "major gaps in his knowledge of New York City politics and policy.  Nor has he ever voted in a mayoral election."  In other words, he's just visiting New York like the tourists dressed as Spiderman and the Statue of Liberty.  There were complaints that the first version was drawn as more of an Asian caricature, so Bramhall went back and changed the eyes.  Yang's campaign nevertheless is playing the race card like crazy, to avoid acknowledging the candidate's spotty voting record and lack of experience.

Yang is a businessman and writer who has never held office, although he briefly ran for president last year.   His platform, insofar as he has one, is "human centered capitalism" and a universal basic income of $1,000, which is not enough to live decently in New York City.  Maybe he won't be any worse than Michael Bloomberg, another businessman with presidential aspirations.  Time will tell.  At least he's unlikely to eat pizza with a knife and fork like Bill DeBlasio.  Vergogna!

Matt Wuerker, the celebrated political cartoonist, puts his finger on the real problem:  newcomers to politics like Yang and Trump don't like to be criticized and ridiculed.  They lack the thick skins and long perspective that people like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton develop over many bruising years in public life and they react by lashing out and putting on their Victim hoods.  Yang and his wife held a press conference in front of a Queens subway station where an Asian man was pushed onto the tracks yesterday, as if to equate a cartoon with attempted murder.  (At the risk of being called racist, I have to point out that an awful lot of anti-Asian violence has been perpetrated by Black men.)  If Andrew Yang does become mayor of New York he's going to need, first and foremost, a sense of humor.  Write this down, Mr. Yang:  The Bronx is up and the Battery's down.