Mystery Guest.
Are you ready for your Mystery Guest?
Don't be late, it will be great.
Open the door for your Mystery Guest.
Will he be a Dream? Or a Dud (no 'e' dudes, in the 60s little girls didn't play with bad boys, or at least didn't admit it)? Tonight Jon 'gets' Bill de Blasio.
De Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm, Jr. in Manhattan, the son of Maria (née De Blasio) and Warren Wilhelm. His father was of German ancestry, and his maternal grandparents, Giovanni and Anna, were Italian immigrants from the city of Sant'Agata de' Goti in the province of Benevento. He was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. De Blasio's mother graduated from Smith College in 1938, and his father graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University. His mother was 44 years old when he was born, and he has two older brothers, Steven and Donald. De Blasio's grandfather, Donald Wilhelm, an author, graduated from Harvard University. Although he was baptized Catholic, de Blasio is nonpracticing. He speaks Italian.
De Blasio has stated that he was 7 years old when his father first left home and 8 years old when his parents divorced. In a 2012 interview, de Blasio described his upbringing: "[My dad] was an officer in the Pacific in the army, [and fought] in an extraordinary number of very, very difficult, horrible battles, including Okinawa…. And I think honestly, as we now know about veterans who return, [he] was going through physically and mentally a lot…. He was an alcoholic, and my mother and father broke up very early on in the time I came along, and I was brought up by my mother's family—that's the bottom line—the de Blasio family." In September 2013, de Blasio revealed that his father committed suicide in 1979 while suffering from incurable lung cancer.
He served on the New York City Council from 2001 to 2009 and after that as New York City Public Advocate from 2010 to 2013. He was elected Mayor of New York City with 73% of the vote and is the first Democratic Mayor since 1993 (David Dinkins). His main opponent in the Democratic Primary was Council Speaker Christine Quinn who (other than being an 'out' lesbian) had no liberal credentials whatsoever having spent her time in office as a loyal toady of Michael Bloomberg.
De Blasio has done two controversial things so far in his brief tenure- first, appointing Bill Bratton Police Commissioner. Despite De Blasio's frequently expressed condemnation of New York City's 'Stop and Frisk' policy it's a little remarked on fact that Bratton was actually the architect of that policy during his first term as Commissioner (1994-96).
The second is of course his de-prioritizing of plowing the wealthy Upper East Side during the first snowstorm. I expect he and Jon will talk a lot about snow removal given today's East Coast Storm (about 6 inches in Stars Hollow thank you, heavy wet stuff. I suppose it could have been worse, some places in New Jersey lost power).
Jennifer Senior is a repeat guest on The Colbert Report and outside of having NO WIKI PAGE it is amazingly difficult to find out anything about her from any source. She's a Contributing Editor at New York magazine and the author of All Joy and No Fun, a book about parenting. She's quite famous for the article Why You Truly Never Leave High School (January 2013) and her two most recent pieces are In Conversation: Antonin Scalia (October 2013) and The Collateral Damage of a Teenager (January 20, 2014) so I expect we'll be talking about how terrible and selfish teenagers are ("What adolescence does to adolescents is nowhere near as brutal as what it does to their parents.").
The rest of the week-
The Daily Show
* Tuesday 2/4: Elizabeth Banks
* Wednesday 2/5: George Clooney
* Thursday 2/6: Robyn Doolittle
The Colbert Report
* Tuesday 2/4: Pussy Riot
* Wednesday 2/5: Lake Street Dive
* Thursday 2/6: Charlie Crist
Now the Winter Olympics starts Thursday and while I'll not be paying attention to the Opening Ceremony, next week my attention will definitely be elsewhere. I NEED HELP! If you can possibly volunteer for a day or two or at least tend the queue and keep the conversation going I desperately need to hear from you. Please PM.