Times 'Bombshell' Is That Paterson Is Aloof, Inept Governor

The scandal is that he's phoning it in, oddly disconnected
By Caroline Miller,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 19, 2010 8:20 AM CST
Times 'Bombshell' Is That Paterson Is Aloof, Inept Governor
New York Gov. David Paterson speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010.   (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

The New York Times rolled out a second installment of its widely anticipated bombshell story on David Paterson today, and it accuses the New York governor of ... being unresponsive and out of touch. No obvious scandal in the piece, which details his being AWOL for 5 hours after a plane crash near Buffalo, lazing in the Hamptons instead of traveling around the state talking to constituents, and failing to bring lawmakers together on key issues.

The Times reports that Paterson is remote from his own aides, ignores his agency heads, puts in ridiculously short days, and repeatedly fails to show up at scheduled events. Paterson, apparently expecting a different story, offered this rejoinder to the Times reporters: “This latest kind of bashing of me is a depiction of me in what is, in my opinion, a racialized, hypersexualized and more or less dissolute context." He adds: "I resent this sort of, in my opinion, and I’ll be frank with you, kind of profiled way that it appears that all I’m doing is drinking, chasing women, doing drugs.”


(More David Paterson stories.)

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