Kathleen Parker Already Hates New York City

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker has just moved to NYC for her new CNN show, the somehow raunchy-sounding Parker Spitzer. But she's already whining about the "bureaucrats." Why won't Michael Bloomberg allow cable guys to eat doughnuts?

Small-town girl Kathleen Parker has a South Carolina mindset, even though she's been living in a "relatively quiet neighborhood" of Washington D.C. for however many years. Washington certainly isn't that much like New York — D.C.'s managed to achieve full racial segregation, with an actual demarcating river, to protect precious transplants like Kathleen Parker — but still, the urban hellhole of Manhattan shouldn't be quite as shocking as this:

But between rules for potted plants on an apartment terrace and a building ban on lighting birthday candles, I've uttered more than once, "Now I know what it's like to live in communist China." Without, of course, the conveniences.

Nothing is simple when you have 8.4 million people living within 303 square miles. This seems obvious, but the daily impact of those statistics can't be fully appreciated until you've experienced it. For every individual action, there are four typed, single-spaced pages of restrictions.

But don't call her a snot just yet! She's in touch with the common people, constantly, and they tell her these things. She spent a whole 1/2-minute with a commoner recently! Only because he had to install the cable. But still: commoner. And Kathleen Parker talked to him! (Does Peggy Noonan know that a new hussie in town is stepping on her column territory?)

You may have heard about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's crusade against trans fats, which are now banned from restaurant fare in the city. Okay, fine, trans fats are bad for you, and I voluntarily eschew them. Not so the fellow who installed my wireless.

"You can't get a good doughnut in the city anymore," he railed. "I have to drive to Jersey to get a decent doughnut."

Why won't Mayor Bloomberg stuff this commoner's fucking face with doughnuts 24/7? Communism. Maybe also because Krispy Kreme franchisees are going bankrupt anyway.

Then, equivocation:


Is the cable man a "country person"? Does he live in the fucking Hundred Acre Wood? No, he lives in New York City, just like Kathleen Parker, and they have the same gripes — even though regulations don't affect Parker, who has "eschewed" trans fats already, and is rich. It's almost like her geographical identity politics fail to explain all phenomena this time. She'll have to keep trying!

City people don't hate trees either. What is that?