Snapplegate Widens

IF THIS SCANDAL isn't made from the best stuff on Earth, then City Controller William Thompson isn't one handsome motherfucker.

As the city's "chief marketing officer" Joe Perello cracks down on internet sales of bootleg FDNY t-shirts, something is brewing—and it ain't tea. Thompson has our full support in trying to crash a legal Red Sea, temporarily parted, onto the Snapple deal and Perello's professional future. And just like in the Bible, certain numbers keep popping up. Just look at all those fives: $50 million is the amount the city will lose over a five-year period by awarding the contract to Snapple, rather than the five other companies that beat the juice giant's final offer. Five is the number of borough presidents Perello lied to when he claimed five months ago that Snapple had offered the best deal. Fifteen million is what the Department of Education's marketing agent, Octagon, will receive for handling the bid. And five is the number of global operating regions for Cadbury Schweppes, another major Octagon client that just happens to own Snapple, a company with a line of no fewer than five delicious fruit-flavored teas.

Neither Bloomberg nor Perello has even tried to seriously argue that the Snapple deal wasn't crooked. But what Thompson has rightly called a case of "corporate cronyism" that can't be allowed to stand, Bloomberg still wants us to see as "a source of some civic pride."

No doubt Bloomberg also locates "civic pride" in his stock portfolio, but what pride is there in branding our public buildings with a chirpy and thoroughly obnoxious company like Snapple, claiming that it "represents" New York City? And what "pride" is there in doing this without wrenching every dime possible out of the process for our cash-strapped school system?

"The mayor does not own city buildings outright," Thompson has said. "They belong to all of us."

It sounds so quaint, you almost forget that it's true.