Times Outs Bloomy's Fickle Outrage Meter

By Tom Robbins Tue., Aug. 4 2009 at 1:06 PM

Categories: Campaign 2009, Crime and Punishment, Featured, Tom Robbins

It looks like Mike Bloomberg's burst of outrage over Plaxico Burress's concealed gun bust is paying off. The former Giant's wide receiver is now facing three and a half years in prison if convicted on criminal weapons possession charges. But as the Times's ever-adroit Clyde Haberman points out today, we can only wish the once and future mayor got half as steamed at some other felons whose recent bad boy behavior was also pretty damaging to New Yorkers.

Just a few days after Burress shot a hole in his leg with his own gun at a city night club, Haberman recalls, Bloomberg showed up at a Staten Island bash to celebrate Vito Fossella who was forced out of his congressional post after being nabbed on a DWI while on his way to visit his and mistress mother of a then-secret child. The city's richest man also ducked queries about the fate of Bernie Madoff. "One did not see him carrying on about the need to throw the book at a swindler who had ruined or unsettled thousands of lives," writes Haberman.

For that matter, Bloomy also kept mum after a couple of his political supporters -- ex Queens assemblymen Brian McLaughlin and Anthony Seminerio -- both admitted in federal court to years of crimes in which they used their elective offices to secretly concoct schemes to steal from everyone in sight. For some reason, those kinds of concealed weapons don't register as high on the mayoral outrage meter.

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