Bloomberg as Electoral King Kong (Veiled Subscription Pitch)

As the New York mayoral race slumps to a close--and an almost certain landslide in favor of current Hizzoner Mike Bloomberg--ABC News leaves us with this King-Kongish image of Mayor Mike swinging from atop the city's second-favorite skyscraper:

New Yorkers began casting their votes for mayor before sunrise Tuesday, just hours after incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg ended his final day of campaigning on a high point from atop the Empire State Building.

The appearance more than 1,000 feet above the city's streets was a fitting finish for a re-election machine that appeared limitless in every way, with no expense spared, nonstop advertising and sky-high poll numbers against Democrat Fernando Ferrer.

Whole thing here. Is this some sort of crazy promotion for Peter Jackson's upcoming remake of King Kong (in a world in which Disney is almost certainly spreading avian flu to push Chicken Little at the box office, all things are possible)? Maybe in his second term Bloomberg can battle Godzilla and Mothra. Call out the planes already to shoot him down (and who precisely is Bloomberg's Fay Wray?). And on the off-chance he loses, who will mutter, "It wasn't those airplanes that killed Kongberg. It was Ferrer who killed the beast"?

In the November issue of Reason, Tim Cavanaugh pulls himself up to his full 4'6" height and blusters: "Mayor Bloomberg, I lived in New Yawk under David Dinkins and you, sir, are no David Dinkins." Go here to find out if that's a compliment or an insult. And what Rudy Giuliani and mugged liberals have to do with it all.

And go here to subscribe to the print edition of Reason. For a lousy $19.97--an amount you can dig out of your mom's purse on an almost daily basis--you get a year's worth of Reason mailed directly to your door. Better still, you get our lushly produced, beautiful-to-the-touch and pleasant-to-the-other-five-senses, veritable-Victoria's Secret-catalog-of-libertarianism mag a month or more before any of the content shows up at Reason Online. You'll get more than your money's worth and you'll get the satisfaction of knowing that you're helping support our efforts to propagate "Free Minds and Free Markets."

Or go here to get a year's sub and our great anthology Choice: The Best of Reason for half price. Renewals, like walk-ins, always welcome.