“Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said (indicted Mayor Eric) Adams took over $100,000 in graft and used his powers to help Turkey. The mayor insisted he was innocent.” —The New York Times
Now you may be wondering what the mayor of New York City could do to help Turkey. I think it’s a fair question you’ve asked, so I looked into the matter. Using my justly celebrated investigative reporting skills, I spent a fruitful day and a half taking notes in that exotic land of deadly assassins and beautiful, dark slinky women, then I left New York and flew to Turkey, a blend of ancient and modern furniture straddling Europe and Africa that used to be called Bulgaria.
Just sitting in the old Stasi coffee shop in Istanbul’s meticulously preserved East German Quarter, sipping a traditional poppy latte and munching a savory balaclava, I felt I had inserted myself into the Turkish lifestyle so authentically that I could not help but succeed. My red, tasseled fez, worn at a rakish angle, signaled to one and all that here was a man who knew how to wear a disguise properly. Casually, I tossed it into the turbulent Dardanelles, that historic waterway between the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, to see if it would float into the nearby Straits of Marmara. But a bearded imam in a worn cassowary returned the dripping fez to me, murmuring, “Señor, I will whisper used secrets to you for only a drachma or two.”
Soon I learned shocking corruptional facts that will knock off not only your sox but your burnoose as well.
Here is the havoc that Adams has allegedly wrought:
Turkish Taffy junkies. For centuries, the nabobs and poobahs who rule the fertile plains of southeastern Turkey tried to ship their dangerous sweetmeat to the unsuspecting West, but couldn’t get a toehold or a handjob until Eric Adams became mayor. New York bodegas and delis are now flooded with cheap, substandard Turkish taffy and the streets crowded with toothless men whose dentition could not withstand the pulling power of the chewy confection.
Fake Turkish baths. The age-old Turkish bath scam still pulls in naive and foolish scrub freaks. Once the unwary bather removes his clothing, the garments are taken off the hook and sold at the flea market and the hapless victim soon finds himself outside the bathhouse, naked and shivering. There are now an estimated 235 such bathhouses in New York.
Fake Turkish Towels. Once the bathhouse victims are kicked into the street, peddlers arrive to sell them what are described as genuine plush Turkish towels hand-knitted by the widows of whirling dervishes killed in action. Of course the towels are fake, made of toilet paper by Sri Lankan peasants huddled over smoke-belching gluing machines in windowless Chinese factories.
Ottomanland. Construction of this 20,000-acre replica of the Ottoman Empire at its peak, set to open in November, was okayed by Mayor Adams even though residents complained it would displace half of Brooklyn and Queens. Among its features will be The Gates of Vienna, a structure perpetually under siege by robotic Ottoman armies, and Catch the Infidel, a ride in which parkgoers on robot camels chase British terrorist T.E. Lawrence across the desert to Aqaba, where he is captured and forced to admit he enjoys being tortured by handsome guards with mustaches.
After reading this, I need to have a Turkish bath, towel and maybe some taffy as I laughed so hard, I leaked a little. Thank you for the geography/history lesson. Is this what our middle schoolers are learning in social studies class?
Not mentioned in the indictment, but floating through it was the implied "Turkish delights", as part of the quid pro quo on offer by Turkish reps engaging with Adams...all together now: "wink-wink, nudge-nudge"!