Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Bloomberg en Español

From 1010WINS:

For a long time, it was hard to get Mayor Michael Bloomberg to say more than a few words in Spanish. But as his third bid for mayor gets off the ground, he can't seem to stop speaking it.

Bloomberg has been studying Spanish since his first run for mayor, and he has mostly limited his public displays to a few phrases and greetings here and there. But now, with more and more Latino voters in New York City, along with higher-rated Spanish-language news broadcasts, Bloomberg is looking for more ways to be heard, despite his inelegant accent and clumsy verb conjugations.

He now concludes every news conference by summing up the main points and taking some questions in Spanish, and at two recent events - a snow briefing and women's luncheon - he answered reporters' questions in Spanish without any help. The responses are sometimes filled with awkward phrases like "the streets have cleaned" and "it was a lot of windy," but the fact that he's willing to try could be important in wooing a growing Latino electorate.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shouldn't registered voters understand English being that they are American citizens and all?

Anonymous said...

The old way = If the people didn't like a politician, they voted him out of office

The NEW WAY = If a politician doesn't like the voters, HE elects a NEW PEOPLE

georgetheatheist said...

"Soy un culo grande." Miguel Bloomberg

Anonymous said...

To be fair, America has always had native born citizens whose first language was Spanish. We got them when we took over Florida, Louisiana, Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico...They didn't even have to cross the border, the border crossed them.

Anonymous said...

But NYC is now and always has been well north of those borders.

Anonymous said...

Now if we can just get him to speak "Queens" we would be OK

Anonymous said...

"The NEW WAY = If a politician doesn't like the voters, HE elects a NEW PEOPLE"

Good one.

Anonymous said...

This time around, he wants to be known as Commissar Amigo.

He wants to be known as the Commissar of Sanctuary City.

He figures the new invaders are too illiterate to understand his intentions with eminent domain.

He figures that they think it is some kind of "royalty" thing.

Anonymous said...

Spanish is just code, anyway. If you stare at Spanish-language ads on the subway for long enough, you can figure them out. That's why I don't understand why everything has to be posted in English AND in Spanish. If I were a Spanish speaker, I am sure I could figure out that DANGEROUS means peligroso. You know? How tough is that?

Anonymous said...

Alcalde de diablo!

Anonymous said...

This a city of immigrants. Why isn't Bloomie trying to speaking Mandarin, Uzbek, Urdu, Hindi, or one of the many other tongues spoken by the dozens of countries represented in our city? Could he just be engaged in cheap political manuevering to curry the favor of the politically influential Hispanic groups? Wouldn't he be doing our immigrant population a favor by insisting that they assimilate and teach them English so they can fully participate in our great democratic society? What a phony!

Anonymous said...

no English get the fuck out

Anonymous said...

Bloomberg, tu eres un gran punta

Anonymous said...

The thing that gets me pissed off is the fact that the Latino community is hoowwinked by these so called "goodwilled" politicians. The Latino community is misinformed. These politicians are not for the better good. My friend told me she had made contributions to the Monster-Rat non-for-profit organization. And I explained to her about the controversy surrounding him -the money that is un-accounted for. Her response..."Oh I didn't know..." I'm like "WTF!?!?" You don't know where or who you give your money to?"...Pitiful..Ugh!