The Question: How does a mayor of New York City manage to leave “Little Italy” off a New York City map of ethnic communities?

Answer: It happens when that mayor is 1) a Muslim, 2) hostile to other ethnic, cultural and religious cultures, 3) raised by parents who themselves were estranged from American culture, and 4) has no management or governing experience, and 5) has assembled a staff whose radical ideological orientations are compatible with his but who mirror his deficits in orientation, experience and and training.

The result was the “New York City Immigrant Enclaves” map above, released and now going “viral” on social media after someone actually looked at it and noticed that the map omits “Little Italy” as well as Jewish and Irish neighborhoods while highlighting 30 other immigrant communities across the five boroughs. The careless map is part of the city’s Neighborhood Passport campaign tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

That’s kind of embarrassing, don’t you think? Here’s another question for fully acculturated Americans: What is the first “ethnic enclave” in New York City that comes to mind after Harlem? Surely the answer is “Little Italy,” which features so prominently in the iconic film “The Godfather, Part 2.” Not only is the famous and unanimously praised movie embedded in pop culture history and still routinely shown on cable’s various movie channels, it is near “Casablanca” as having one of the most quoted screenplays of all: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” “This is the like we have chosen,” “I just want to wet my beak,”and others.

“Oh bloody hell,” as self-exiled EA columnist Curmie would say. The New York Times actually published this round-table circle-jerk by three of its writers on the opinion page: “‘There’s No Graham Platner Without Donald Trump’: 3 Writers on the Fiasco in Maine.” [Gift Link, with a head explosion risk warning] Sorry for the vulgarity, but seriously folks, how long can the New York Times go on like this? Yesterday the highest-ranking news editor at the King of the Axis Media, executive editor Joe Kahn, finally admitted that the outrageous May 11 opinion column by Nicholas Kristof accusing Israel of training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners didn’t meet Times news standards. Got that? So Times columnists can publicize fake news and unverified positions, and the paper lets them get away with that.

Now we have this garbage, with three progressives blaming the Platner debacle…on Donald Trump!

“In retrospect, it seems clear that Platner had something of Trump’s shamelessness. I saw him when the first scandals had just broken, and wondered both how many people would be in the crowd and how he’d explain himself. (No one knew at the time that much worse was to come, though of course some people suspected it.) He was unbowed in a way that read as strength…There’s no Graham Platner without Donald Trump. Trump’s ability to keep winning and hold G.O.P. support made Democrats feel like they had permission to accept Platner’s faults for as long as they did,,,”

What a crock. Platner is nothing like Trump, who was a CEO of a large and successful development company, had extensive business, negotiation and management experience, had authored books on management and was a national figure before he got into politics. Hhe doesn’t drink and has never used drugs. He also was and is about as far away from being a communist as it is possible to be. Platner was a substance-abusing part-time oyster fisherman who has accomplished exactly nothing: his “faults” are all there is.

Here’s the execrable Michelle Goldberg:

“Why does Trump keep talking about ‘communism’?” CNN asks in a funny headline that answers its own question. Because, you hacks, today’s Democratic Party is crawling with communists.

“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” Trump said during his July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.” At a Fourth of July celebration on the National Mall, the President pledged that “America will never be a communist country.” CNN is perplexed! What is this mysterious “communism” of which the President speaks?

Gee, what could it be? Graham Platner said he was a communist, and was endorsed by Bernie Sanders (who went to Stalin’s Soviet Union on his honeymoon), Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Ed Markey, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Ro Khanna, and Sen Ruben Gallego. Is the argument that Platner’s Nazi tattoo appealed to them? His non-existent leadership experience? Was it his record of domestic abuse?

The Mayor of New York both spouts Marxist slogans routinely and is being hailed as a Democratic Party “rising star.” Hilariously, both Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York and Melat Kiros in Denver, who won primaries over establishment Democrats, are defended against allegations that they are communists because “they identify as democratic socialists.”

Riiiight. And Lia Thomas identifies as a female. “You solve homelessness by giving people housing, you solve hunger by giving people food,” Kiros has said. You know. “To each according to his needs.” Chevalier, in addition to wanting to abolish police, prisons and borders, has said that she wants to “seize the means of production.”

“Communism? What communism?”

Once again I must evoke the 1978 novel “IQ 83,” by science fiction author Arthur Herzog. A man-made virus escapes a lab and begins reducing the intelligence of Americans to idiot levels. “Is We Getting Dummer?” shouts a typo-filled New York Times headline (not that Times headlines over the last several years have been a lot better). The suspense of the plot involves the desperate scientist responsible for the disaster rushing to find a cure before his own IQ dips so far that he starts watching “Three’s Company” reruns and laughing at them. Two hints that the nightmare may be coming true imposed on my consciousness yesterday.

The first is the headline above from Science News. We’re constantly told to “follow the science,” despite constant reminders that our scientists are politicized, careless, sloppy and dishonest. To make things worse, the support staff and journalists who write about scientists’ work and want us to trust their conclusions aren’t too bright. How many people read that headline and didn’t think, “Wait, WHAT?” How could that get into print?

Then there was this: “A new national survey from the Cato Institute, conducted in collaboration with Morning Consult of 2,253 Americans ahead of July 4th and America’s 250th anniversary, finds nearly half (46%) of Americans don’t know what America’s 250th anniversary commemorates.”

Wow. Do we have a great educational; system or what? In truth, we shouldn’t need our schools to teach our children about the founding of our nation. That information is ubiquitous: all anyone needs is to pay attention. Possess intellectual curiosity. Be raised in a family that thinks, reads and discusses current events.

An IQ of 83 doesn’t have to come from a virus.