Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber

by Andy Borowitz

In his riveting book, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution, David Paul Kuhn re-creates the scene: “As the mass coalesced, men’s eyes were trained on City Hall. Shouting persisted: ‘Where’s Lindsay?… Lindsay’s a rat!… We want Lindsay! We want Lindsay!’ ” The deputy borough president, Leonard Cohen, “saw a ‘large mass of men,’ about five to six hundred, with yellow hard hats and American flags, pushing against the front of City Hall, ‘shouting slogans and chanting angrily.’ The men drove forward and reached the foot of the steps. Suddenly, they surged up the stairs ‘as if to storm City Hall itself’… Scores of hardhats hopped City Hall’s fence, leapt over the hoods of boxy police cars, and toppled iron barricades. Several hardhats ran with flags pointed forward, like soldiers brandishing their colors.” A rioter reached the roof of City Hall, where he restored the flag to full staff, to the raucous cheers of his brethren below. By day’s end, dozens had been injured.