{"id":3395,"date":"2008-05-01T06:11:38","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T11:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3395"},"modified":"2008-05-01T06:11:38","modified_gmt":"2008-05-01T11:11:38","slug":"up_myrtle_avenue_in_a_dress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/05\/up_myrtle_avenue_in_a_dress.html","title":{"rendered":"Up Myrtle Avenue In A Dress"},"content":{"rendered":"

The letter writer apparently doesn’t get into the city much<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Charles Ober — an openly gay candidate running for the City Council seat formerly held by Dennis Gallagher — said Wednesday he has been smeared by a nasty anti-gay screed.<\/p>\n

But Ober, a Democrat, was not alone in denouncing the hateful anonymous missive.<\/p>\n

He was joined at a news conference by a potential rival from the opposite side of the political spectrum: Republican hopeful Thomas Ognibene.<\/p>\n

The letter — a typed page full of vile hate speech, with frequent spelling and grammatical errors — was sent to an unknown number of households in Ridgewood, Middle Village and Glendale, they said.<\/p>\n

“You need to know that one of the candidates that is trying to get Dennis’ seat is a f—-t,” the letter began.<\/p>\n

“If you do not want your kids to be exposed to this garbage, you need to make sure you vote — and not for Charlie . . . Ober,” the diatribe continues. “Our kids will be exposed to f—-ts holding hands, kissing and running up Myrtle Ave. in a dress.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fortunately, there is still a healthy level of cynicism in Middle Queens:<\/p>\n

Multiple Democratic insiders inferred that Ober and Ognibene — who have been spurned by their respective political parties in the nonpartisan special election — may have concocted the hate mail scheme to boost their candidacies.<\/p>\n

“It looks like they manufactured an issue and tried to get press on it,” said Michael Reich, executive secretary of the Queens Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Others blamed Ober for going along with the conservative Ognibene in a plan to divide the Democratic vote.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The letter writer apparently doesn’t get into the city much: Charles Ober — an openly gay candidate running for the City Council seat formerly held by Dennis Gallagher — said Wednesday he has been smeared by a nasty anti-gay screed. But Ober, a Democrat, was not alone in denouncing the hateful anonymous missive. He was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jerk_move","category-queens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}