Rip Van Winkle

Here's an un-jaundiced review of Day 1 from Amy Luke, an 8th grader from Delmar who watched Eliot Spitzer's inauguration yesterday from behind the metal barricades with her mom, Jina, and a few thousand of their closest friends.

Azi P: If you could tell the new governor something, what would you tell him?

Amy L: Um, that I think he's going to do a good job. And he sounded really positive.

AP: What made him positive?

AL: He didn't say bad things that happened to New York.

AP: He said New York has been asleep for ten years like Rip Van Winkle.

AL: Yeah, that was kind of mean.

AP: Did you find it sad?

AL: It was kind of mean for the old governor, Mr. Pataki.

AP: What do you think Mr. Pataki was thinking when he heard that?

AL: Hey, I did my best.

"It was an excellent speech. And it was well delivered."

Sheldon Silver liked it too, apparently. Far from being offended by Spitzer's reference to Rip Van Winkle as a metaphor for New York over the past decade, Silver said that it "very artistically referred to the prior administration."

I reminded Silver that the speech also called for "introspection," and asked what he was thinking of.

"I'm thinking of going forward," he said.

"Like Rip Van Winkle, the legendary character created by the New York author Washington Irving, New York has slept through much of the past decade while the rest of the world has passed us by."