Come the Revolution

The picture on the left says it all.

I don't know how much of a stink the media is making in the outside world about the "crisis" in northwest Queens, but I'm frankly amazed that people aren't rioting and tearing down the glass towers of Manhattan.

For those of you who're too busy sucking on the everything's-peachy glass teat of the TV news, around 25,000 people in northwest Queens have been without electricity through the worst heat wave the city's seen in a number of years. For eight days, now.

From the New York Times:

"Consolidated Edison reported major progress yesterday in the week-old struggle to restore power to western Queens, but thousands faced a new workweek without electricity and frustrations boiled over as some officials called for a declaration of emergency and the resignation of the utility’s chief executive."

Fozzie is going on eight days without power at his apartment in Astoria; he spent the last four nights with me, ut I'm sitting here wondering about the people who don't have someone to stay with -- a place to go where they can hang out in the air conditioning for a while or get a cool drink. And why aren't these people storming the headquarters of Con Ed like the mob from a Frankenstein movie, torches and pitchforks akimbo?!?

The most infuriating thing is that no one who matters -- like the mayor of NYC -- seems to think it's a particularly big deal. He keeps having news conferences in which he's out there telling us that there are people trying to help and we're just going to have to suffer through it. And while that may, indeed, be true, heads need to roll. Not the Con Ed worker on the ground, certainly. From what I've heard, they've been practically heroic.

No, I think that it's the manager and the planners who need to be out on their asses. Or maybe in jail. Again, from the Times:

"To reporters later, he used even stronger language, saying that Mr. Burke and other utility officials should be held criminally responsible.

Mr. Gioia called the blackout the last straw. “Con Ed misled the public,” he said. “They misled the media and the mayor. They’ve shown no plan to get out of this crisis.”

He spoke of elderly sick people and a woman unable to get milk for her baby. “When Kevin Burke called this an inconvenience it made my blood boil,” Mr. Gioia said.

Mr. Burke, at his news briefing, brushed aside questions about the demands for his resignation, saying he was focused only on the restoration of power."

Having had to watch Fozzie go through all this, I'm perfectly ready to see them all in jail.