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Media Watch

A Smugger Version of This Weekend’s Backstabbing in the Daily News

12:06 PM EDT on May 20, 2013

This weekend you might have come across the anonymous Daily News editorial in which Arthur Browne's opinion team called Paul Steely White "smug" for defending bike-share (in an opinion piece solicited by Arthur Browne's opinion team). But is it smug to point out that New Yorkers who don't own cars also deserve to have a share of the curb? Or that bike-share stations made in 2013 belong in historic neighborhoods as much as 2013 model cars?

Of course not. For a dose of genuine smugness, I invite Arthur Browne and his team of cranks to read this condensed, satirical version of the attack they published on Saturday:

Moving one's car for alternate-side parking is the single most aggravating aspect of living in New York City. Unless you're one of those people who don't own a car, in which case you never have to spend a second worrying about where to put your car, or whether you've paid up all your outstanding parking fines.

Not only do we despise alternate-side parking, we also despise every single New Yorker who doesn't have to structure their life around it.

All of this has nothing to do with bike-share, which isn't going to make owning a car in NYC any more or less miserable. But it fills us with rage to know that the city is making it easier to live without a car by launching this bike-share program, when New Yorkers without cars already have it so good.

Someone wipe that grin off Paul White's face.

Now that's smug.

Ben Fried
Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.

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