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What “New York Values” Means To Me
I suppose “New York Values” is kind of a Rorschach blot, with people reading into it whatever they like, but to me it means this: I think that if the four hijacked airliners on September 11, 2001, had hit anywhere but Manhattan, New Yorkers wouldn’t feel so strongly about it. In fact – and this is just my gut feeling – if the only one that had reached its destination that morning was the one that hit the Pentagon, the majority of New Yorkers would have said, “Eh. Just a bunch of warmongers anyway. Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
Let’s not forget that many people sum up that day as the day the Twin Towers were attacked, as if that were the totality of the horror that was inflicted. I have actually had conversations that went like this:
“The Pentagon, too, remember.”
“The what?”
“The Pentagon. It was hit, too, and Flight 93.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, that, too. Boy, that Flight 93, that was something.”
Published in Culture, General
Have you met the majority of New Yorkers? Why should anyone take your “gut feeling” seriously?
You have a point, though I wonder whether the same might be said of people from any region. Is it not natural to care most about one’s neighbors? Then there is the tendency to try to distinguish ourselves from victims so that we may convince ourselves that this could not happen to us. In either case, the catastrophe is something that happened to someone else and seems rather foreign.
However, I have had the thought, and have spoken with others who are like-minded, that if this had to happen somewhere it was best that it happen in New York, because they might not have been entirely sympathetic to the citizens, say, of Indianapolis. Probably unfair, though, and short-sighted, too, because New Yorkers appear not to have learned very much from their horrendous experience.
Plenty of Texans used to live in New York or for whatever other reasons appreciate New York City and New Yorkers. But that doesn’t keep us from half-seriously cursing New York the same way we talk jokingly (most of the time) about secession.
To people in the South and Midwest, generally speaking, New York and California are shorthand for lefty lunes. Whereas Californians have a reputation for being crazy hippies, New Yorkers (from the city) are known as unmannered fools who look down their noses at us. Cruz represents my district… which, being on the outskirts of a metropolis, has its share of lunes.
I think everyone is being way too hard on New Yorkers. They are just normal people, like everybody else. :) :)
“New York Values” is a political slogan, whose effectiveness depends on an element of exaggeration, calculated ignorance and cartooning. As shorthand for de Blasio, Schumer, the Clintons of Harlem, Wall Street financiers and network elites it is fair game, though a game that can be played badly.
As a “gut” understanding of the patriotism and intellectual, moral and spiritual attachment of 20 million people in the New York metropolitan area to their country it is less than useless.
As is this post, which is singularly ignorant and mean-spirited.
I love this post –
I suspect your gut is correct in as much as most NYers are from the left to hard left and have injested the toxic brew of self hate / America hate / white hate etc
I remember as the second plane hit telling someone I was working with in NY – that islamo fascists were responsible and how now we are going to get our head and ass rewired together and take the fight to the perpetrators – and he launching into a long rambling mix of the above coupled with the belief that “well we don’t know who they are anyway” — my point is that a large part of the loony left is not capable of seeing with their eyes and hearing with their ears
Does anyone remember how the government of New York, presumingly representing the ‘values’ of the majority of its people, EXCLUDED the first responders – police, fire and yes even clergy – from the official ten year Anniversary memorial of 9/11/2001? Bloomberg even has the gall to say … “We don’t have room for them” (at the inn?).
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/09/10/bloomberg-defends-exclusion-of-clergy-first-responders-on-911-some-cops-not-convinced/
But now, they want to wrap themselves in the honor of the police and firemen as the best representatives of their values? SRSLY? Hypocrisy … thy name is “New York Values”.
I’d give the same odds to that as the probability, that had Flight 93 been the only one successful attack, that the majority of people in the South and Midwest would have said “Eh. Just a bunch of Washington bureaucrats, anyway. Probably had it coming.”
By which I mean, very low odds.
To paraphrase a recent Kevin Williamson piece, if Republicans think they can win by lobbing rhetorical hand grenades at the country’s largest cities, we might as well get used to losing.
Then there are some of us old enough to remember the New York City of the 1960s through early 80’s, before the explosion of Wall Street and LBOs and the financial sector was building to be the largest component of the S&P 500. Dirty, old, broke, bailed out by Gerald Ford and Federal Government, portrayed as the murder capital on TV and ghetto reality from movies such as “Shaft”. Absolutely no respectable Family would be caught dead around pimp and drug infested Times Square. New York values indeed. Then the likes of Rudy came along and cleaned it up and hand in hand with the financial sector who were selling off industrial America while shifting millions of jobs offshore, New York became rich, respectable and the center of political influence again. Is it on its way down again? Time and the looming detonation of a nuclear device will only tell.
I grew up in New York and moved to the Pacific Northwest as an adult. The effects of living in a society strictly limited by mass population and a limited view of the sky, a place where the dependence on government is a given, took many years to undo, even in the socialist paradise of Seattle.
One makes an enormous number of compromises living in a big city that are made unconsciously when you are born into them. For me, the ownership and carrying of a handgun, a right which is almost unheard of in New York City, though my father had a permit, was a real starting point for understanding my relationship with the government. It only begins there. The rules for living in New York City are far more limiting than in smaller, less populous centers, and New Yorkers are used to having the limitations of their freedom determined for them.
When I got to the Northwest and started spending my weekends in the wilds of the Cascade mountains, I began to understand how much I had missed in my growing up years. Even such things as not having to stand on liftlines in ski areas and getting only a few runs in the course of a day caused a real awakening.
The real basis for so much of what governs New York values is how little freedom its people really have, how dependent they are on rules to feel safe and secure in a concrete jungle.
Is there a difference between “New York values” and the “San Francisco values” that Jeanne Kirkpatrick mentioned at a previous Republican convention?
Perhaps, the real shock of 9/11 was that the government New Yorkers depend on so heavily in all areas for their safety and sense of security failed to protect them from attack. The shock must have been horrendous.
I had lived in the Northwest nearly 40 years before the attacks of 9/11. I had become used to natural disasters, like Mount St Helens eruption, and understood the responsibility of the individual for his or her own safety and security. New Yorkers have very little real contact with nature and the natural world, and, as a consequence have little understanding of personal responsibility at its most existential level. I believe that’s what Ted Cruz was referring to in his comments.
Trump and I went to school together at Kew Forest School. We grew up in the same environment, with the same values. He stayed there, and never really changed. I came out here and grew up. He depended on his wealth and position to gain access to “rights” others were denied and never really thought that to be extraordinary. I learned that we were all equal and entitled to the same opportunities. That is one essential difference between New York and Flyover country, you don’t have to pay to be free where I have lived most of my life.
… “lobbing rhetorical hand grenades at the country’s largest cities” …
A nice turn of phrase. However, I don’t believe that is what Ted Cruz did. Even if it was a “hand grenade” (doubtful), it was lobbed at the Donald and not NY. And besides, exactly when did Republicans ever win the country’s largest cities? One can certainly describe this as being an unforced error by Cruz, but to say that because of it, we might as well get used to losing …. ? C’mon man!
New York is one arm of the Trinity of power and influence in the United States, along with Washington DC and Hollywood.
I think few would bat an eye if a candidate talked about DCValues or Hollywood Values.
The fact that so many are crying foul over New York Values kinda illustrates just how important it is to the Trinity. It struck a pretty exposed nerve.
On the other hand, New York is bigger and more diverse than either DC or Hollywood. He mighta been safer saying Manhattan Values. The other boroughs are “just folks”.
Questioning the patriotism of New Yorkers because they identify 9/11 with the destruction of the Twin Towers and the murder of 3000 of their fellow citizens is remarkably cheap rhetoric.
The entire country identifies 9/11 with the the destruction of the Twin Towers.
How many people associate December 7, 1941 with the destruction of America’s Pacific B-17 squadron and the murder of 100 airmen in the Philippines?
If a resident of Honolulu, or any other American, identified December 7 with Pearl Harbor in, let’s say, 1955, would you have questioned their patriotism or accused them of responding “live by the sword die by the sword” when reminded of the other losses on December 7.
Of course not.
Cruz played the “New York Values” card badly and was in turn played by Trump. Maybe a clever commercial will soon be rolled out to turn the tables back in Cruz’s favor owing to some specifics in the Iowa race and Trump’s statements.
But where does Cruz go from there?
Double down against “Iowa City Values”?
Campaign in NH against “Hanover Values”?
In CO, against “Denver/Boulder Values”?
In SC, against gay-friendly “Charleston Values”?
Across the SEC against Atlanta, Miami, and New Orleans values?
If you want to exclude Giuliani voters from the GOP you are politically suicidal: You get eight years of “Clinton Values”.
Is it true that some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood? Hop a flight to Miami Beach, or to Hollywood?
You sound like the type to take a greyhound, on a Hudson River line…
Just as I do not like politicians playing up class warfare, I do not see the wisdom of regional warfare either.
That said, the Governor of New York summed up NY values when he said that people who are pro-life, pro-gun rights, or who support traditional marriage, “have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
“Wall Street Values” or “Manhattan Values” would’ve worked better than a broad swipe at New York.
You’d think a guy whose wife works for Goldman Sachs would get that.
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere. It’s up to you….
#NewYorkStateofMindPrivilege
I considered “Wall Street Values” in my comment, but I decided against it because it’s too narrow. Manhattan Values captures all the people who live in multi-million dollar loft apartments and yet still consider themselves members of the 99%. i.e. the “Bourgeois Bohemians”.
New York isn’t a member of the American power trinity simply because of Wall Street. It’s also the locus for advertising, public relations, art, television, fashion, etc. i.e. The industries that shape the culture.
Yes, and I’d add to that the fact that millions of people aligned with values associated with the ‘Right’ have fled those paragons of American virtue – the cities. It was a flub, not any permanent dis-qualifier. They are trying to get rid of Cruz (he helped a bit but his ‘apology’ was masterful.
A Republican Party that has a more explicit commitment to federalism would be a great boon in our politics, regardless of whether locally we celebrate the virtues (and corresponding vices) of Texas Values or New York Values.
Why during this whole manufactured crisis no one on the stage had the sense to make that point, I’ll never know.
Everyone outside of NYC knew exactly what “New York Values” meant.
And if truth be told everyone IN NYC knows what it meant also. It had nothing to do with first responders and 911 and still doesn’t.
Aw shucks, I was hoping that the end of this sentence would read something like this:
If the four hijacked airliners on 9/11 had hoped to demoralize this country, they selected the wrong city to attack.
Denise McAllister points out that Trump himself has distinguished New York values from those of flyover country.
“If you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere.” I get the impression that New Yorkers feel the rest of the country doesn’t live there because we can’t hack it. The New York Yankees are emblematic. I have the feeling that the Yankees view the rest of baseball as their farm team. Imagine hearing the smug John Sterling saying, “This Alex Rodriguez kid, he is shaping up to be a pretty good player.” once the Yankees signed him.
Cruz has made that point several times during this campaign (unfortunately not when you indicated he should). I don’t think most people appreciate how profound that point of Federalism (in the traditional sense) could improve harmony in these United States. Fine, New York, California & MA can have gay marriage & tax payer provided abortion – the majority of other states could abstain and work out their own compromises. I too wish candidates would make more of this attribute of Federalism.
I like Cruz, but it was a dumb comment. It does little to encourage patriotic New Yorkers, and it encourages the undecided to see Cruz as a stereotypical Texas yahoo.