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You have to hand it to these people. For the cosmopolitan image they like to project, big-city folks sometimes utter comments so insulting and absent of sensitivity that it makes you realize: You can dress in $800 suits and have an Upper East Side address and still be a lout.
We saw another example last month of the casual ignorance of the self-impressed. New York City’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, barged like a barroom drunk into the state’s potentially dangerous push to collect sales tax on Indian cigarettes sold to non-Indians. Bloomberg suggested that Gov. David Paterson should “get [himself] a cowboy hat and a shotgun” to settle matters.
It was the sort of remark I would expect from a kid on a playground, not from a public official with a Harvard MBA. Who is this guy’s sensitivity adviser, Don Rickles?
To me, it is more evidence of the truth behind the famous New Yorker magazine cover drawing in which a Manhattanite’s map of America barely extends beyond Westchester County. Anything past that border is a barely civilized mystery.
All of which underlines the geographic, political and economic divide between upstate and downstate. At least then- Gov. Eliot Spitzer felt our pain, comparing upstate to an economic Appalachia. He was the exception. The rule, it seems to me, are the Bloombergs and the Shelly Silvers, who runs the Assembly with a New York City-sympathetic, upstate-dismissive fist. Silver occasionally makes an obligatory trip to Buffalo, all the while looking as if he is counting the minutes until his return flight.
The cowboys-and-Indians caricature is the sort of insulting stereotype that I thought went the way of the black lawn jockey—although maybe I speak too soon. Some pro sports mascots—notably the Cleveland Indians’ widemouthed “Chief Wahoo” throwback— make me wonder what century we’re living in.
Although we have differences, Senecas and upstaters tend to coexist pretty well. I am not a big fan of Seneca casinos, which I feel are a bad deal for Western New York taxpayers. But a lot of people gamble there and take advantage of tax-free gas and smokes on the reservations. Native Americans mix easily into the larger society. Judging by recent polls, there is respect here for Native American sovereignty—even if, as in the case of untaxed cigarettes, it means less money in Albany’s pocket.
Bloomberg’s implication, however jokingly, that we live on a wild frontier populated by “Injuns” on horseback and hardy flannel-shirted settlers hewing trees for log cabins shows that the mayor needs to get west of Manhattan’s West Side more often. He might be stunned to learn that folks here enjoy such amenities as indoor plumbing, running water and even hand-held electronic devices.
Although Bloomberg might think the tax dust-up is amusing, nobody here is laughing. Recent attempts at taxing Indian cigarettes prompted the Senecas to close down the Thruway running through the Cattaraugus reservation and battle with state troopers. Note to Bloomberg: None of the Senecas were armed with bows and arrows.
This is serious business. Indians whose economy is partly dependent on sales of untaxed cigarettes, and a state government desperate for new revenue, are navigating murky legal waters in search of an acceptable answer. If history is a guide, it may get ugly. It is a tough issue, and I will leave it to the courts to decide where sovereignty ends and taxation begins.
As the taxation dispute comes to a head, I sincerely hope that nobody follows Bloomberg’s jocular advice and reaches for a six-shooter. Unlike in the old Westerns, the emotions are real— and so are the bullets.
source: buffalonews.com