Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Is anyone courting the homeless vote?
As I approached the 86th Street subway station yesterday morning, I encountered Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. She was out glad handing for votes in the posh Upper East Side neighborhood. Actually, I first ran into a young man right out of Central Casting. Her twenty-something aide...who tried to get me to take one of the four-color fliers he was handing out.
“Meet your congressman, Carolyn Maloney,” he said, with practiced cadence and zeal.
I breezed past him with a quick “No thanks.” That’s when I came face to face with Maloney (who, by an odd quirk of districting, is “my” congressperson in Astoria)...a fake smile plastered on her face as she extended her bony hand to shake mine.
A few steps behind her (no more than three feet), a homeless man was begging...a genuine grimace on his face as he extended his bony hand for spare change. He wanted change...literally and figuratively. But “his” congressperson didn’t appear to notice him (at least not while I was there).
I left Maloney’s hand outstretched and untouched...but pressed a quarter into the homeless man’s outstretched hand before entering the subterranean tunnel of transportation to ponder life in the Land of Opportunity.
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
