ONE HIT WONDER: The Most Obvious Scandal in New York City’s History Mayor Eric Adams swaggered right into a corruption indictmenT | THE NEW YORKER DAILY

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Thursday, September 26, 2024

In today’s newsletter, a rare first for the city of New York, and then: • “The Perfect Couple” is un-prestige TV • Can you stomach this tasting menu? • The fate of the finance bro The Most Obvious Scandal in New York City’s History Mayor Eric Adams swaggered right into a corruption indictment. By Eric Lach Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux It took four centuries for a mayor of New York City to be charged with criminal conduct while in office. There have been some close calls: in 1986, agency heads in Mayor Ed Koch’s administration were indicted in a sprawling scandal, but the Mayor himself was not charged, and finished out his term. Before this week, Jimmy Walker, the ninety-seventh mayor of the city, arguably came closest to being indicted while on the job. Known as Beau James, and sometimes as the Night Mayor, Walker was forced from office in 1932 amid allegations involving bribery and municipal contracts. He skipped town, and went to Europe with his girlfriend (and, later, wife), a Ziegfeld girl named Betty Compton. He never faced prosecution. It’s interesting to think about what foreign countries Eric Adams might hole up in. According to an indictment that was unsealed on Thursday, the hundred and tenth mayor of New York City is facing five federal counts of fraud, bribery, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. The charges are not exactly surprising: last year, federal agents took at least two of the Mayor’s phones, and an iPad, as part of an investigation into his campaign’s and administration’s ties to the Turkish government and Turkish business interests. These charges are the result of that investigation. And over the years Adams himself has made no secret of his fondness for Turkey, its people, and their financial resources. Keep reading Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » More on the Mayor “This is going to be one of the most fascinating mayoralties in history,” Eric Adams told The New Yorker’s Ian Parker, last year, in a comprehensive Profile that detailed the embattled mayor’s personal mythologies. He later added, “Anyone who believes there’s not a God, they need to watch my journey.” Read more on Adams’s tumultuous tenure: How Eric Adams Started Mentoring a Con Man What Does Adams Have Beyond Swagger? Plant-Based Pizza and Branzino: The Mayor’s Usual, at Osteria La Baia Editor’s Pick  Annals of Gastronomy Can Your Stomach Handle a Meal at Alchemist? At the Copenhagen restaurant, diners are served raw jellyfish—and freeze-dried lamb brain served in a fake cranium—while videos about climate change swirl on the ceiling. Is it “gastronomic opera,” or sensory overload? By Rebecca Mead If you know someone who would enjoy this newsletter, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. Culture Dept.  On Television Nicole Kidman Gives Us What We Want in the Silly, Soapy “The Perfect Couple” The Netflix murder mystery recalls a time when TV wasn’t supposed to be art. By Vinson Cunningham Under Review A Story Collection About People Who Just Can’t Hang Niche-porn addicts, self-proclaimed feminist allies, and nightmare optimization bros converge in Tony Tulathimutte’s “Rejection.” By Jia Tolentino Page-Turner How Ruth Krauss Made a New Kind of Children’s Literature Decades before “Inside Out,” the author showed us the inner life of kids—and the strangeness of their imagination. By Adrienne Raphel Critics at Large: Depictions of finance have oscillated between glamorizing Wall Street types and condemning them. In the latest season of HBO’s “Industry,” is greed good again? Listen and follow » Video Dept.  Screening Room A Relationship and a Nation in Turmoil in “Bogotá Story” This short film examines the strain that a young woman endures when she has to choose between her dreams and her family. Film by Esteban Pedraza Fun & Games Dept. Mini Crossword A Smallish Puzzle One of two for a Bactrian camel: four letters. By Mollie Cowger Shouts & Murmurs My Life According to My Foreign-Language Exercise Book I hang out with my friends at the park, and we play ball. By Enrico Pinto and Hannah Robinson Daily Cartoon Thursday, September 26th By Peter Kuper Name Drop: Can you guess the identity of a notable person—contemporary or historical—in six clues? Play a quiz from our archive » P.S. Ninety years ago this week, Babe Ruth played his last game as a Yankee. As this colorful Profile of the slugger from 1926 makes clear, Ruth had a “thousand and one failings,” perhaps chief among them a superhuman ability to spend, lose, or otherwise mismanage money. “One thing and one thing alone Ruth does well,” the writer Arthur Robinson noted, “and this he does with supreme distinction. He can hit a baseball harder and farther and higher than any hitherto recorded.”

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