Some Kind Of Show.(The Talk of the Town)

Ralph Nader came to Cooper Union last week, railing against the corporate "fat cats" and their political allies for continuing to subvert democracy with self-serving back-room deals. "They're going to throw this city into a very serious recession," he said, speaking to a crowd of several hundred. "They're going to deplete tax revenues." He is running for President, again, but his appearance could have been mistaken for a cameo in the surprise City Hall production that we'll call "Mayor Richie Rich and the Cosmetics"--to borrow from the nickname that a West Sider named Erik Jacobs gave the Mayor at a public hearing on Thursday--starring Michael Bloomberg and Ronald S. Lauder. One of Nader's opening acts, the singer Nellie McKay, acknowledged as much when she introduced her third and final number by saying, "If I were mayor, I wouldn't do three songs, because I'd have term limits."

So Bloomberg wants to remain in office, having forgone the chance to join Nader as an independent Presidential candidate. He sees Lauder, who reportedly spent four million dollars of his Estee Lauder makeup fortune lobbying for term-limits referenda in 1993 and 1996, as the chief obstacle, and offers him a deal: a spot on a future charter- revision commission, which would be welcome to undo any damages to democratic precedent, in exchange for his support now, in this financial crisis, in extending the limits by four years. The City Council, whose members stand to benefit from the same extension, agrees to bring the matter to a vote. Enter Anthony Weiner--congressman, erstwhile front-runner in the 2009 mayoral race, and goalie for a middling men's-league ice-hockey team--as a kind of municipal Nader, determined to defend the democratic process from conspiring billionaires, the Mighty Corporate Ducks.

During a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Weiner said, "We already have an investigation under way of the deal with Ron Lauder," and noted the irony of the Mayor's presence in California, where, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, he stumped for a proposition that would prevent that state legislature from redrawing its districts without civilian oversight. "So he's a ...