This was strange, even for a mayor who once declared – seven years in his administration – that New York needed to be saved while under a blue whale model.
On the one hand, Bill de Blasio’s eighth and final speech on the state of the city was not even a speech.
Not a bit of the performance was live.
And never, throughout the 28-minute pre-recorded online affair, did Hizzoner turn to the camera to address the audience directly.
Instead, New Yorkers (if any other than reporters being paid to tune in) were treated with generic images from across the city – sometimes scenes from pre-pandemic life shockingly mixed with those clearly filmed after the coronavirus attack – how De Blasio played the narrator.
Generic music played in the background. From time to time, a text would appear on the screen while de Blasio presented his 2021 agenda under the motto “A recovery for all of us”.
“The future starts here in New York. It is the place that people need to come, it is the place where people need to invest, ”intoned Hizzoner at the end of the 30-minute commercial. “We will show the world, day by day.”
An hour after the video was posted online, it was viewed only 423 times.