This Chapin flap is oh-so-Blakeman
A sign at the Harry Chapin Lakeside Theater in East Meadow features County Executive Bruce Blakeman above one naming the theater. Credit: Howard Schnapp
Self-promotion is the bane of many an elected official. The same goes for the graceless practice of punching down from a lofty public perch to berate those who complain.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who’s been around GOP politics for a long time, is usually proper, courteous, and congenial one-on-one when he isn’t playing defense.
Right now, though, he’s very much on the defensive over an irritating and insipid use of his position.
The first-term GOP executive practically begged for a bit of backlash with the posting of a large and triumphant “Nassau County Executive Bruce A. Blakeman” sign on the back wall of the Eisenhower Park stage for the annual Harry Chapin tribute concert.
Call it a political ad, or a banner, or a cry for credit, the big blue-and-orange thing dwarfs the "Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre" sign just below it. It wouldn't be the only Blakeman plug found around the park. Nor is this sort of thing unique.
One concert organizer, Stuart Markus of Malverne, has noted the late Chapin’s role in philanthropy. For example, the late Huntington Bay resident founded Long Island’s first food bank, Long Island Cares.
In this context, Markus told Newsday, he decided not to participate with that oversized Blakeman sign displayed. “Knowing that so much of the Republican agenda has been pushing tax cuts for the wealthiest and the corporations," he said, "and cutting programs that help poor people put food on the table, like the child care tax credit, it feels dishonest and dirty.”
Another man might have been quietly angry, and another might have just let it go, but not Blakeman. He grabbed at Markus' political dig as an invitation to color it all partisan.
“Let’s get down to the real issue,” he wrote to Markus in a letter released by his office. “And that is, you don’t like the fact that a Republican was elected county executive.”
Then, while honoring Chapin’s contributions and tragic death, and defending his own charitable motives, Blakeman added: “I never held a grudge that [Chapin] was a Democrat operative.”
Wait. What? Chapin a “Democrat operative?”
Well, the singer was a delegate for presidential candidate Mo Udall in 1976 who — like Richard Nixon — favored national health insurance. Later Chapin successfully lobbied President Jimmy Carter to establish a commission on world hunger.
But come on. Jackie Robinson, who backed Nixon and other Republicans for president, isn't remembered as a “GOP operative,” is he?
This “operative” stuff is far dumber than a minor spelling error in Blakeman’s letter that drew guffaws on social media. He cast the word “ludicrous” as “ludacris." That is the spelling of the stage name of a well-known 45-year-old rap artist from the South.
For that matter, the Chapin flap echoes a show-about-nothing that Blakeman created at the start of the summer when his administration filed suit to stop the Hot 97 Summer Jam, citing fears of violence and lawbreaking.
Bottom line: That hip-hop concert went on as it has before, with extra security and unsurprisingly, under the circumstances, no Blakeman signs.
Cultural wedges are all the rage in politics, and this kind of dust-up is clearly on-brand for Blakeman.
But at some point he may wish to put a new twist on an old Ronald Reagan admonishment: Keep government off the backs of the people's entertainment — even when lunging for political attention.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
