What’s Wrong With Being Sexy?

With Marianne Willaimson sadly not going to become a thing, as you would expect Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd is thrilled to fantasize about Michael Bloomberg being the Democratic nominee. This leads us to one of the most MoDo things in MoDo history, a thing I still can’t believe I just read:

Both of these salesmen can be charming or thin-skinned and arrogant. Both have politically fluid histories. Both have their feet to thank for keeping them out of Vietnam; Bloomberg had flat feet and Trump (supposedly) had bone spurs. Both have been accused of having a sexist streak, even though they supported Hillary Clinton at times and have voiced appreciation for smart women. And both men have talked openly about their love of beautiful women.

“How can Donald Trump be a misogynist? He has made clear that he considers many women, not least his own daughter, eminently fuckable!” As for Bloomberg, he has also indeed, er, “expressed his love for beautiful women”:

[S]he said, “The mayor is going to yell at me when I get out of the car because I have flat boots on. The mayor has no use for flat shoes.” Really, I said. Why would he care? “I was at a parade with him once and he said, ‘What are those?’ and I said, ‘They’re comfortable,’ and he said, ‘I never want to hear those words out of your mouth again.’ ” Everyone in the vehicle, including the security detail in the front seat, cracked up. “He likes me in high heels. Let’s see how long it takes before he notices.” She scrolled through her BlackBerry. “Another big thing with the mayor, when I am rooting … like, the couple of days a week before I need to get my hair colored, he’ll say, ‘Do you pay a lot to make your hair be two colors? Because now it’s three with the gray.’ And I’m like, ‘Did you wake up being this big of an asshole? Or did it take, like, all day to ramp up to it to be able to insult me like that?’ ”

[…]

In 1996 and 1997, four women filed sexual harassment suits against Bloomberg LP. One of them, a sales executive named Sekiko Garrison, alleges that Michael Bloomberg told her to “Kill it!” when she shared with him that she was pregnant. Asked by Garrison to repeat himself, Bloomberg said again, “Kill it!” Garrison says that Bloomberg went on to lament that she was going to be the sixteenth woman in the company to be taking maternity leave.Garrison further stated that Bloomberg antagonized her even before she became pregnant, asking her of her engagement ring, “What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?” and, a week later, “Still engaged? What, is he that good in bed, or did your father pay him off to get rid of you?” In a deposition, Bloomberg is reported to have conceded saying “I’d do her“ in relation to Garrison, but he insisted that he thought “do” meant to have a personal relationship with someone. Other reports from the deposition say Bloomberg almost stormed out of the proceedings when the opposing attorney asked him if he thought the porn film Debbie Does Dallas meant Debbie has a personal relationship with everyone from Dallas.

Much, much more where that came from. This is how Dowd describes him:

As Bloomberg told me in 2001, right after the bachelor announced he would run for mayor: “Nobody has ever accused me of not being interested in women. I have the other problem when they write the story.” Trump once had a date with Candice Bergen and Bloomberg had a dinner with Diana Ross. Bloomberg talked about his love of Bond girls but, unlike Trump, preferred more mature women in real life.

What can you even say at this point? This is literally the “but I married one!” defense against sexism, being featured in the nation’s most valuable op-ed space.