New York City mayor Bill de Blasio finds himself at the center of yet another scandal, this one so tawdry that it should be introduced with saxophone music on every news program. It’s got everything: sex, murder, and a massive cover-up. You could squeeze this story a dozen times, and a different sizzling headline would pop out every time.
The New York Post is all over the death of a trans-gendered New Yorker named “Charlotte,” who was performing under the name “Chuck” when de Blasio muscled into her act. Now she’s dead, and the Mayor’s fingerprints are all over the case. Does this get any less juicy if I mention that Charlotte was a groundhog?
Mayor Bill de Blasio has groundhog blood on his hands!
A week after Hizzoner dropped Staten Island Chuck in front of a crowd of spectatorson Feb. 2, the winter-weather prognosticator died of internal injuries — and then the coverup began, The Post has learned.
Staten Island Zoo officials went to great lengths to hide the death from the public — and keep secret the fact that “Chuck” was actually “Charlotte,” a female impostor, sources said Wednesday.
The stand-in was found dead in her enclosure at the Staten Island Zoo on Feb. 9 — and a necropsy determined she died from “acute internal injuries,” sources said.
She had fallen nearly 6 feet when the mayor lost his grip during the Groundhog Day photo op. Sources said her injuries were consistent with a fall.
That’s when the cover-up began:
Instead of revealing the sad loss, the zoo — which gets nearly half of its $3.5 million in annual funding from the city — told the staff to keep the mayor’s office in the dark about the animal’s fate.
They told only a few zoo supporters — but claimed that the groundhog had died of natural causes.
“I was told he died of old age, that he went to that big farm in the sky,” said Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-SI), who later learned how the animal had died.
The zoo also never revealed the biggest secret of all — that the part of Chuck was being played by Charlotte. Chuck was benched because the zoo feared he could bite de Blasio, as he did Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009.
The zoo doesn’t make public that it has stand-in groundhogs to protect the “groundhog brand,” insiders said.
Aha! There’s a corporate angle, too! Charlotte’s death was covered up to protect Big Groundhog from damage to its brand!
The zoo is still trying to claim de Blasio had nothing to do with it, even though the autopsy seems pretty clear about those “acute internal injuries.” If the six-foot drop didn’t inflict those injuries, what else could have? How many other traumas was Charlotte exposed to in a week? Was she some sort of groundhog MMA fighter, or extreme-games enthusiast? (Okay, she was a professional stunt-groundhog, so maybe we need to find out if she did any grueling high-risk movie work in the days before her death. Can anyone establish the whereabouts of Michael Bay between February 2nd and 9th?)
I smell a rat. A metaphorical rat, I mean. Even the Washington Post is getting in on the conspiracy, attempting to impugn this fine investigative report by dismissing it as “among the top ‘so New York Post’ stories in the long and amazing history of the New York Post being the New York Post.” How much did Big Groundhog pay you to write that?
The Washington Post also asks why “the city of New York entrusts its long-term meteorology to a marmot.” Because they’re more reliable than climate-change activists?
