Cathie Black Emails

Bloomberg was forced to release the Cathie Black emails tonight.

Gave the emails (you can see them here) a preliminary skim. 

What I see here so far is a Bloomberg administration trying to save a floundering nomination and throwing around ideas like trying to bring "famous" women on board to sell Cathie Black to the public, to the media and to Albany.

The names of some of the women they wanted to endorse Black for chancellor included:

Marlo Thomas
Bette Midler
Gloria Steinem
Suzi Orman
Phyllis George
Anna Quindlen
Donna Hanover
Deborah Norville
Donna Karan
Whoopi Goldberg

An assorted variety of female politicians, ex-politicians and other public figures are also on the endorsement possibility list.

There's also a go around between Gayle King and Cathie Black on bringing Black's old boss, Oprah, in on the endorsement fun.

One of the points the Bloomies want talked up is that any pushback on Black is a matter of sexism, because Black is just as qualified to be chancellor as Joel Klein was, but he never received the same relentless press Black was getting.

They also spend some time trying to figure out whether they should make clear Black's complete work for and connections to Harlem Village Academies or try and hide some of them

What you get from the emails is that they are looking for ways to sell Black's nomination by hook or crook.

In the end, they did sell that nomination successfully, but Black only lasted for 95 days.

These emails really are a great example of how much effort this administration puts into public relations.

That's not a surprise, given that Bloomberg owns a media company.

If they only ran the school system as well as they created propaganda around the running of the school system (or around the nomination of a woman who had no business being chancellor of the school system), we would all be better off.