Shocking news from The Times: Mayor Bloomberg, who has long claimed to have been born in the sun-dappled shadows of Medford, Mass, hard by almost-Ivy institution Tufts University, is actually - horrors - a Bostonian. Who ratted him out? His mom.
Michael was born in Boston, she said, and spent the first few years of his life in Brookline, another suburb of Boston.
"He was born at St. Elizabeth's Hospital on Cambridge Street in Brighton," Mrs. Bloomberg said. Brighton is a working-class neighborhood of western Boston.
Why the prevarication? We can understand how it might be impolitic for a man running for mayor to claim roots in a city that New Yorkers, when they think about it at all, recognize mainly as the city that gave us Babe Ruth and all those funny folks from "Cheers." But if the accent is equally annoying, what difference does it make? And why change now? Could it have something to do with a possible run for president? Everyone knows that this country loves nothing more than a candidate with a Boston birth certificate.
We would have gone with Somerville.