"Say what you will about him Ed Koch is still the best show in town"
About this Quote
New York forgives a lot if you can keep it entertained. Pete Hamill's line about Ed Koch lands like a backhanded valentine: not an endorsement of virtue so much as an admission of irresistible presence. "Say what you will" clears space for every indictment already in the air - ego, cronyish vibes, endless self-promotion - then shrugs and keeps walking. Hamill isn't denying the criticism; he's betting that the criticism is part of the attraction.
Calling Koch "the best show in town" is doing double duty. It flatters Koch as a one-man marquee while quietly demoting politics into performance, with the mayor as headline act and the city as audience. Koch, master of street-corner call-and-response ("How'm I doin'?"), understood that governing in late-70s/80s New York meant projecting competence through personality: after fiscal crisis and social fracture, charisma could read as stability. Hamill, a journalist steeped in the city's tribal instincts, captures how New Yorkers often measure leaders less by policy purity than by whether they seem to inhabit the city at full volume.
The subtext is that spectacle becomes a civic utility. Koch's constant visibility fills the vacuum where trust should be; the show substitutes for reassurance. Hamill's wit is in the uneasy compliment: the "best" doesn't necessarily mean good. It means, in a crowded, cynical marketplace of power, Koch was the rare politician who could still command attention - and in New York, attention is currency.
Calling Koch "the best show in town" is doing double duty. It flatters Koch as a one-man marquee while quietly demoting politics into performance, with the mayor as headline act and the city as audience. Koch, master of street-corner call-and-response ("How'm I doin'?"), understood that governing in late-70s/80s New York meant projecting competence through personality: after fiscal crisis and social fracture, charisma could read as stability. Hamill, a journalist steeped in the city's tribal instincts, captures how New Yorkers often measure leaders less by policy purity than by whether they seem to inhabit the city at full volume.
The subtext is that spectacle becomes a civic utility. Koch's constant visibility fills the vacuum where trust should be; the show substitutes for reassurance. Hamill's wit is in the uneasy compliment: the "best" doesn't necessarily mean good. It means, in a crowded, cynical marketplace of power, Koch was the rare politician who could still command attention - and in New York, attention is currency.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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