That Whoopi Goldberg story. Wow. Everyone covered the news that Mayor de Blasio went on ABC's "The View" to tout his national bona-fides and ended up getting lectured by an uninformed, fact-ignoring talk show host about how bike lanes are "screwing up" the city. The clip is here. After you're done and your blood pressure drops back below 300, enjoy our full roundup:
- The Daily News's Jillian Jorgensen pointed out a few of Goldberg's lies about bike lanes.
- The Post's story was flat out all-Whoopi-all-the-time, actually giving credence to the star's windshield perspective on the city. (Steve Cuozzo must have been editing that day.)
- The Times didn't cover it (but then again, the Times didn't cover the Citi Bike expansion, so what do you expect?)
- Even Patch covered it.
- Gothamist proved again why it is so valuable, as Christopher Robbins pointed out that Goldberg is not only a liar, but lives in a $2-million New Jersey estate (is that all? She must have downsized from her $9-million place in Pacific Palisades). Robbins also pointed out that cyclist Madison Lydon was killed over the summer one block from the studio where "The View" is taped. Lydon, of course, was run over when she was forced to veer around an illegally parked taxi into traffic because there's no bike lane on Central Park West. We suggested naming it after Goldberg.
- And lots of people made sport on Twitter, with Doug Gordon, Charles Komanoff, Ken Schwencke, Rebranding Driving, @brianvan, Dani Simons, and DoorZone getting in the best licks. Bicycle Lobby had a nice caption contest of a photo of Goldberg getting out of her SUV.
- But no one pointed out what Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman did in today's column, arguing that Goldberg Trumpified an important issue.
Of course, there was some other news.
- Gothamist did a second-day take-out on all the unanswered questions remaining on the L-train shutdown that appears likely to no longer be a shutdown. One nice detail? The MTA has shut down its website that had all the details of the pre-Cuomo plan. Nice.
- The Queens Eagle wrote about an 88-year-old man who was run over and killed in Astoria, but for some reason, the Dozier Hasty-published local paper didn't think it newsworthy to point out that the intersection had six crashes last year alone, according to city statistics.
- Residents of Morris Park Avenue are still complaining that the mayor wants to save their lives! (News12)
- And, finally, Treehugger's Lloyd Alter reminds us anew that massive, three-ton SUVs with six-foot-high hoodlines are the AK-47s of the roads. Why don't state DMVs register these killing machines as trucks instead of as cars? At least states could recoup the damage these vehicles do to our roads, our pedestrians and our planet.
