I hope you choke on the prawn sandwich

Thanks to Batgirl for emailing me this from Counterpunch, which I always forget to read. This a very local story about the Atlantic Yards Development, dressed up as an attack on the New York Times.

Now, Times-bashing is incredibly boring, and usually only reinforces the paper's self-regard. I think it would keep up its preposterous campaign to be taken seriously as this Olympian, impartial paper of record regardless. But this series of positive stories about the development, including a really weird one about the truly terrible Atlantic Center Mall, is worth eamining. [Side note about that mall: it has an Old Navy, Pathmark and a Circuit City, as well as some other really cheap joints laid out in the most cramped and confusing way possible. You feel as if you're walking around a hospital. The counter-proposals usually include knocking it down - very funny].

Nice to see some heat about the development that doesn't come from the sports writers. Mike Lupica in the Daily News did dwell on it a few months back, and managed to cut through some of Ratner's Nets-coming-back-to-Brooklyn-and-replacing-theDodgers crap. I also thought that the coalition between Nets fans and the Park Slope crew was doomed to fail (too many sniggering hipsters). But hopefully the Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn Crew can put some more heat on starry-eyed reporters. After all, bringing the mighty Tish James over was always going to be the easy bit.

The headline, by the way, refers to the last Ratner to overexrtend him self. He was Gerald Ratner, owner of a chain of British Jewelry stores, who once decided to refer to his own product as crap. In fact, he noted that a prawn sandwich would cost more and last longer than some of his earrings. He was fired. Even though he owned most of the company. The chain is now known as Signet.