Best Waste of Paper:
Borough President C. Virginia Field's Press Releases
from NY Press' Best of Manhattan 9/20/99

Assault by Fax Machine. This is rich stuff. Paleo-Democrat Blackwoman and Harlem machine hack C. Virginia Fields (hey, how come Esquire hasn't laid "Women We Love" honors on her yet?) wants the electorate to know she's working. Hence the incessant flurry of notices from her Centre St. offices that our fax machine spits out a couple of times every week, and sometimes even more than once a day.

Like most New Yorkers, we're usually about as interested in what's happening at the offices of the borough presidency -- a now-irrelevant post that should be eliminated with the next charter revision -- as we are in Details' much-discussed redesign, and just transfer the insipid documents ("MANHATTAN BOROUGH PRESIDENT C. VIRGINIA FIELDS TO HOST RECEPTION HONORING CARIBBEAN-AMERICANS" reads one of the latest) to the recycling bin.

But one recent Fields extravaganza took the cake. "MANHATTAN BOROUGH PRESIDENT C. VIRGINIA FIELDS ADVISES RESIDENTS THAT SPRAYING IN MANHATTAN IS SCHEDULED TO BEGIN ON SATURDAY NIGHT," it announced.

Oh she does, does she? Funny. We received this fax around noon on that very Saturday. Which meant that even if we were a daily newspaper, news of the Borough President's diligence and bravery wouldn't get printed until Sunday -- a day late to warn people about the recent malathion insecticide spraying, and about a million years after every major news outlet on the planet had disseminated the same news. Here's how the press release begins:

"Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields today was briefed by Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Jerry Hauser on plans to spray in Manhattan to reduce the population of mosquitoes carrying St. Louis Encephalitic (SLE). The Borough President yesterday visited the OEM command center to see first-hand the City's plan for spraying the borough and the city. The Borough President was informed that the City will begin spraying..."

The Borough President was informed? Everybody was informed. It was on the news. What a self-aggrandizing waste of time, energy and -- yes -- paper. The sooner the borough presidencies are eliminated and Fields is compelled to earn an honest dollar, the better.