Our Lady in waiting
July Fourth is coming.
The Statue of Liberty. 1865, French lawyer Édouard René Lefebvre de Laboulaye’s idea. It was to commemorate the bond twixt France and America. The deal? France pays for it. We spring for the pedestal.
Nine years for Bartholdi to sculpt it. Minus the pedestal it’s tall as a 15-story building. The factory was Gustave Eiffel’s who also threw together his own little Eiffel Tower thing.
March 1885 Miss Liberty’s allness got stuffed into 214 wooden crates to schlep here. Things stalled. Like chintzy USA today — current piggy bank of Janet Yellen, our Brooklyn-born perennial money lady, now Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America — our all-time greatest country on Earth lacked funds.
Baltimore and San Francisco itched to grab it if NYC stayed chintzy. Enter Joseph Pulitzer who’d just bought the New York World and needed a shtick to build his newspaper’s circulation.
He hammered financial tycoons with: “One millionaire merchant’s pen could settle the matter.” Probably waiting for Amazon, no rich types cared. So Pulitzer wrote his readers something like: “Shove the millionaires, let’s hear from the people.”
Back then, aflame with patriotism, they responded — sending pennies and dollars. Pulitzer printed every donor’s name. By August 1885, 120,000 subscribers had donated over $100,000 — enough to complete the pedestal. Even Hunter Biden wouldn’t have needed more. Joe, maybe.
Making ‘progress’ in the courts
Great then, ungreat now. Patriotism’s dead as the $2 bill. It’s trash religions, politicians, schools, businesses, landlords, rulings — even the black robed Supremes.
NY has over 300 treatment courts for mental health, community, family treatment, domestic violence, veterans, sex crimes, human trafficking, etc. — yet some say that Dem State Deputy Majority lummox Gianaris — cranky for ruling against his redistricting maps — will never give a judge who ever ran as a Conservative approval for anything.
E pluribus unum. One for all and all for one — providing you’re a progressive.
Screeners
Beginning 1948 journalist Ed Sullivan MC’d Sunday’s CBS-TV weekly variety show 23 years. Showcased Beatles, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, Nat King Cole, Jackson 5, Supremes, James Brown. “Sunday Best” premieres Sunday at Tribeca Fest. Berry Gordy son Kerry co-produces . . . Cybill Shepherd who played Martha Stewart in a 2003 TV movie says: “I met Martha years ago but not since playing her. Be great to appear together on some talk show.”
Heard & scene
What they’re saying:
John Travolta: “Publishing your life story is unimportant. Important is to document your life somehow as one would do in a diary.” (2006 Hyperion bought his autobio.)
Chris Meloni: “I was no angel growing up. Did a few bad things. Stole stuff, a little vandalism. I was the kid whose parents always had to come in for a meeting with the teachers.”
Matt Damon: “Only time I can really enjoy privacy is when working on a movie set.”
And what I’m saying is:
Visit restaurant Cucina 8 ¹/₂. It’s at 9 W. 57th. Service, A-1. Menu — from sushi to Italian to Gavi di Gavi black label wine — excellent. And it’s only in New York, kids, only in New York.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
