New Yorker article on Markowitz

Brownstoner had a link this week on an article in the New Yorker that profiles Marty Markowitz, the much-beleaguered Brooklyn borough president.

It's a long article and quite amusing at times. For those who are too busy to read the article, I've culled the more poignant quotes here.

• "When they write the book on city government and say, 'What does a borough president look like?' I'm going to show you Marty Markowitz," Bloomberg said.Markowitz bounded to the podium to announce the addition of five hundred thousand dollars for Restoration Plaza from his own office's capital budget to the Mayor's pledge of seven hundred thousand. "Only in Brooklyn, and only in New York, can two Jewish boys make this Christmas present to you tonight," Markowitz bellowed, while Bloomberg stood to the side wearing a well-worn grimace, as if he were an audience member at a borscht-belt comedy show who had been dragged onstage and obliged to endure a few humiliating moments of audience participation.
  

• he claims not to see the point of leaving Brooklyn and has no interest in travel, although his wife insists on a cruise to the Caribbean once a year. "I neverget off the ship," he says. "I appoint myself Homeland Security chief, and watch to make sure all the food comes out on time."
  

• He hoped that tourists would discover the variety and ethnic wealth that the borough had to offer. "Only in Brooklyn can you go from China to Russia in fifteen minutes," he said, his enthusiasm overruling any memory of geography class, where he might have been taught that those two countries share a border for more than twenty-two hundred miles.