CNBC's Joe Kernen likens Mamdani win to Bane's Wall Street purge from The Dark Knight Rises
News anchor Joe Kernen has said that New York City could become like Gotham in Christopher Nolan 's Batman trilogy after Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani 's shocking victory in the city's Democratic mayoral primary.
Speaking on CNBC on Wednesday (25 June), the presenter said: 'Have you seen what Batman is up against in Gotham, and what the guy running for mayor is up against? That's what it reminds me of.'
'They're taking Wall Streeters and making them walk out onto the ice in the East River and hope — and then they fall through. I mean, there is a class warfare that's going on.'
Mamdani, a self-described socialist, ran a campaign that had the high cost of living at the forefront.
Some of his proposals include free buses, universal childcare, and higher minimum wage - all paid for by new taxes on the rich.
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The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Bill Moyers, Lyndon Johnson press chief and celebrated broadcaster, dies at 91
Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television's most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died Thursday at age 91. Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former chief executive of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B Johnson's administration. Moyers' son William said his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a 'long illness'. Moyers' career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson's press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for CBS Evening News and chief correspondent for CBS Reports. But it was for public television that Moyers produced some of TV's most cerebral and provocative series. In hundreds of hours of PBS programs, he proved at home with subjects ranging from government corruption to modern dance, from drug addiction to media consolidation, from religion to environmental abuse. In 1988, Moyers produced The Secret Government about the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, and simultaneously published a book under the same name. Around that time, he galvanized viewers with Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, a series of six one-hour interviews with the prominent religious scholar. The accompanying book became a bestseller. His televised chats with poet Robert Bly almost single-handedly launched the 1990s Men's Movement, and his 1993 series Healing and the Mind had a profound impact on the medical community and on medical education. In a medium that supposedly abhors 'talking heads' – shots of subject and interviewer talking – Moyers came to specialize in just that. He once explained why: 'The question is, are the talking heads thinking minds and thinking people? Are they interesting to watch? I think the most fascinating production value is the human face.' Demonstrating what someone called 'a soft, probing style' in the native Texas accent he never lost, Moyers was a humanist who investigated the world with a calm, reasoned perspective, whatever the subject. From some quarters, he was blasted as a liberal thanks to his links with Johnson and public television, as well as his no-holds-barred approach to investigative journalism. It was a label he didn't necessarily deny. 'I'm an old-fashion liberal when it comes to being open and being interested in other people's ideas,' he said during a 2004 radio interview. But Moyers preferred to term himself a 'citizen journalist' operating independently, outside the establishment. Public television (and his self-financed production company) gave him free rein to throw 'the conversation of democracy open to all comers,' he said in a 2007 interview with the Associated Press. 'I think my peers in commercial television are talented and devoted journalists,' he said another time, 'but they've chosen to work in a corporate mainstream that trims their talent to fit the corporate nature of American life. And you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment.' Over the years, Moyers was showered with honors, including more than 30 Emmys, 11 George Foster Peabody awards, three George Polks and, twice, the Alfred I duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton award for career excellence in broadcast journalism. In 1995, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. Born in Hugo, Oklahoma, on 5 June 1934, Billy Don Moyers was the son of a dirt farmer-truck driver who soon moved his family to Marshall, Texas. High school led him into journalism. 'I wanted to play football, but I was too small. But I found that by writing sports in the school newspaper, the players were always waiting around at the newsstand to see what I wrote,' he recalled. He worked for the Marshall News Messenger at age 16. Deciding that Bill Moyers was a more appropriate byline for a sportswriter, he dropped the Y from his name. He graduated from the University of Texas and earned a master's in divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was ordained and preached part time at two churches but later decided his call to the ministry 'was a wrong number.' His relationship with Johnson began when he was in college; he wrote to the thensenator offering to work in his 1954 re-election campaign. Johnson was impressed and hired him for a summer job. He was back in Johnson's employ as a personal assistant in the early 1960s and for two years, he worked at the Peace Corps, eventually becoming deputy director. On the day John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Moyers was in Austin helping with the presidential trip. He flew back to Washington on Air Force One with newly sworn-in President Johnson, for whom he held various jobs over the ensuing years, including press secretary. Moyers' stint as presidential press secretary was marked by efforts to mend the deteriorating relationship between Johnson and the media. But the Vietnam war took its toll and Moyers resigned in December 1966. Of his departure from the White House, he wrote later: 'We had become a war government, not a reform government, and there was no creative role left for me under those circumstances.'
Times
41 minutes ago
- Times
British students hoping to study in US warned about online posts
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Gun control crusader and former US Rep. Carolyn McCarthy dead at 81
Former U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who successfully ran for Congress in 1996 as a crusader for gun control after a mass shooting on a New York commuter train left her husband dead and her son severely wounded, has died. She was 81. News of her death was shared Thursday by several elected officials on her native Long Island and by Jay Jacobs, chair of the New York State Democratic Committee. Details about her death were not immediately available. McCarthy went from political novice to one of the nation's leading advocates for gun control legislation in the aftermath of the 1993 Long Island Rail Road massacre. However, the suburban New York Democrat found limited success against the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment advocates. McCarthy announced in June 2013 that she was undergoing treatment for lung cancer. She announced her retirement in January 2014. Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi said the nation has 'lost a fierce champion.' 'Carolyn channeled her grief and loss into advocacy for change, becoming one of the most dedicated gun violence prevention advocates,' Suozzi said on X. She became a go-to guest on national TV news shows after each ensuing gun massacre, whether it was at Columbine High School or Sandy Hook Elementary School. Known as the 'gun lady' on Capitol Hill, McCarthy said she couldn't stop crying after learning that her former colleague, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, had been seriously wounded in a January 2011 shooting in Arizona. 'It's like a cancer in our society,' she said of gun violence. 'And if we keep doing nothing to stop it, it's only going to spread.' During one particularly rancorous debate over gun show loopholes in 1999, McCarthy was brought to tears at 1 a.m. on the House floor. 'I am Irish and I am not supposed to cry in front of anyone. But I made a promise a long time ago. I made a promise to my son and to my husband. If there was anything that I could do to prevent one family from going through what I have gone through then I have done my job,' she said. 'Let me go home. Let me go home,' she pleaded. McCarthy was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island. She became a nurse and later married Dennis McCarthy after meeting on a Long Island beach. They had one son, Kevin, during a tumultuous marriage in which they divorced but reconciled and remarried. McCarthy was a Republican when, on Dec. 7, 1993, a gunman opened fire on a train car leaving New York City. By the time passengers tackled the shooter, six people were dead and 19 wounded. She jumped into politics after her GOP congressman voted to repeal an assault weapons ban. Her surprise victory inspired a made-for-television movie produced by Barbra Streisand. Since that first victory in 1996, McCarthy was never seriously challenged for reelection in a heavily Republican district just east of New York City.. Some critics described McCarthy as a one-issue lawmaker, a contention she bristled about, pointing to interests in improving health care and education. But she was realistic about her legacy on gun control, once telling an interviewer: 'I've come to peace with the fact that will be in my obituary.'
