Observer makes fun of rat complaints, claims "hysteria has reached such epic proportions"

So, Matt Chaban of the New York Observer, who can be a decent reporter, didn't attend the meeting last Thursday about rat problems in the area around Atlantic Yards.


But he had to write about it, so today he applied a little 'tude, headlined Atlantic Yards ‘Rat Tsunami’ Plagues BroBos [Brooklyn Bourgeois Bohemians or Brownstone Brooklyn], providing a list of the complaints, ending with:

• Two stolen Bugaboos, with babies attached.

O.K., so we made that last one up, but the hysteria has reached such epic proportions, it seems possible. After all, The Brooklyn Paper is worried about the hantavirus infecting BroBos this summer if things don’t get better. Given their weak constitutions, it is bound to be a deadly epidemic.

My comment

As I commented:

Matt, this is really beneath you.

If you'd attended the meeting, or read the coverage (including mine) more carefully, you'd know that many of the people affected have been there more than 40 years, and that they represent a spectrum of ethnicity and class.

So the Bugaboo reference is not just a cheap laugh, it's way, way off.

As is making fun of people who are plagued by rats.

 The issue, actually, is who's responsible for fixing the problem.