The Mayor in Popular Culture
The New York City mayoralty has played a central role in several films and television series. Spin City (1996–2002), set in City Hall, it cast Barry Bostwick as the dim-witted mayor, but starred Michael J. Fox as a deputy mayor, whose primary task was to keep the mayor from embarrassing himself in front of the media and voters. City Hall (1996) starred Al Pacino as an idealistic mayor and John Cusack as his deputy mayor, who leads an investigation with unexpectedly far-reaching consequences into the accidental shooting of a boy in New York. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) features Lee Wallace as an indecisive, flu-struck mayor who is bullied by his deputy and booed by the citizenry. The comic-book series Ex Machina posits an alternate history in which the 2001 election is won by the independent Mitchell Hundred, a former superhero called the Great Machine, who sweeps to victory after saving the second tower of the World Trade Center on September 11. A fictional mayor is also featured in the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series.
Local tabloid newspapers often refer to the mayor as "Hizzoner", a corruption of the title "His Honor". Several mayors have appeared in television and movies, as well as on Broadway—most notably in The Will Rogers Follies. In the 1980s and 90s, Mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani had appeared on Saturday Night Live on several occasions, sometimes mocking themselves in sketches. Giuliani and Bloomberg have both appeared, as themselves in their mayoral capacities, on episodes of Law & Order. Giuliani has made cameos in films such as The Out-of-Towners and Anger Management. Bloomberg has appeared on 30 Rock and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Read more about this topic: Mayor Of New York City
Famous quotes containing the words mayor, popular and/or culture:
“If a large city can, after intense intellectual efforts, choose for its mayor a man who merely will not steal from it, we consider it a triumph of the suffrage.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)
“I am writing to resist the view that Europe and civilization are going to Hell. If I am being “crucified for an idea”Mthat is, the coherent idea around which my muddles accumulated—it is probably the idea that European culture ought to survive, that the best qualities of it ought to survive along with whatever cultures, in whatever universality. Against the propaganda of terror and the propaganda of luxury, have you a nice simple answer?”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)