What's up with Bloomberg?

So, last Sunday I volunteered at a Halloween-themed 5k race near my house. It's one of those where everyone runs in costume, so it's a lot of fun. I was assigned to a barricade at a low-traffic intersection, keeping cars from driving onto the course. At the higher-traffic points, city police cars were stationed to block traffic for the duration of the race.

Between volunteers and police, there were at least 30 points where traffic had to be stopped, and this was for a 5k. That's roughly three miles.

The New York City Marathon, on the other hand, is 26.6 miles. This afternoon Mayor Bloomberg finally announced that the marathon wold not take place Sunday as planned, even after spending the entire week insisting that Hurricane Sandy's destruction of the region wouldn't affect the race. And the world's reaction is basically "DUH." I mean, they're still pulling bodies out of houses in Staten Island, Mike. A fracking footrace would be pretty fracking tacky under those conditions.

This surprises me so much because Bloomberg has shown himself to be a pretty savvy politician so far. Saying something like, "Earlier this week, we thought we'd be able to do the marathon. But now we know that it's just not the right priority for the city right now" would be the most natural thing in the world for him, and anyone would accept that.

Instead, even as he announced the marathon's cancellation, Bloomberg said:

"While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division... We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it. We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event -- even one as meaningful as this -- to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to recover from the storm and get our city back on track."

Really? It's the controversy that would be the distraction? You're going to come right out and say that resources wouldn't be diverted, when that's in fact the obvious truth? You can't have a marathon without police to block streets and control the crowd - police that would otherwise be keeping people from rioting at gas stations if they weren't busy making sure people had running lanes. That's the very definition of "diverting resources," and it's absolutely baffling that Bloomberg can't admit this.

I don't know Bloomberg enough to guess what's going on with him. But, in an otherwise steady handling of this crisis, he's really missed the mark when it comes to this marathon.