BLOOMBERG VS. ATKINS: You know, for someone who made a billion-dollar fortune as the head of a broadcasting empire, Mayor Michael Bloomberg sure is lacking in media savvy. Witness a flap this week, in the mayor was dining with some firefighters, and dismissed as "bullshit" that Dr. Robert Atkins, inventor of the Atkins Nutritional Approach, had died after slipping on some ice and hitting his head on a Manhattan sidewalk last year. Bloomberg went on to call the doctor "fat," and intimated that it was in fact the diet, and not the ice, that caused his death- and since reporters with tape recorders were present, the whole quote made the papers the next day.
This, predictably, caused much anger for Atkins' widow Veronica, who demanded an apology. Bloomberg stonewalled for three days, at one point even telling her to "lighten up." Now perhaps I'm biased, seeing as how I'm doing Atkins and now and all, but what should have been a minor gaffe was magnified about a hundred times by his pig-headed refusal to back off. In doing so, he not only alienated the widow Atkins, but also the 50,000 or so New Yorkers who follow the diet.
Finally tonight, about five days after this all started, the mayor apologized to Mrs. Atkins-albeit through a spokesman, and not personally- and it was decided that they will have a steak dinner together. And people thought Rudy had trouble dealing with people as mayor...