The nightmare of Mayor Helen Gym

I was having a nightmare the other night, and I awoke in a cold sweat.

I rushed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face and turned on KYW NewsRadio.

OMG! It wasn’t a nightmare. The identity-obsessed Helen Gym is running for mayor.

First, the good news. She is off City Council. That’s a plus. We have an opportunity to drive her off the public payroll for good. 

[Pronunciation Guide: Gym is pronounced with a “g” as in goofy, not a “g” as in Jim.] 

She has been a top vote-getter in her races for an At-Large Council seat, and with at least eight mayoral candidates next year, someone could easily win with less than 20% of the votes actually cast. (Not total of registered voters, more than half of whom never bother to vote.)

Example: The worst D.A. we have ever seen, Larry Krasner, was elected by about 15% of all registered voters.

Helen Gym is a leader of the city’s growing progressive movement, a movement more concerned with bike lanes and gender pronouns than a strong economy and public safety.

Oh — public safety. In her declaration of candidacy, Gym talked about it, but could not even convince Inquirer reporter Anna Orso that she was serious about it.

Gym is far more serious about attacking statues than attacking crime. She succeeded in cancelling the Frank Rizzo statue with the help of spineless Jim Kenney, who had it hauled away in the middle of the night.

“Someone once wrote about me,” Gym said, “that if I haven’t fought with you, you are not in Philadelphia politics.” Or operated a racist food truck.

Let me indulge my nightmare and imagine what a Gym administration would look like.

Naming a police commissioner is arguably the most important appointment a mayor gets to make.

But would a woman of color, Ms. Gym, fire another woman of color, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw?

Yes.

In order to hire a nonbinary transgender police chief who uses the pronoun “they.”

This is a two-fer — get two (or more!) police commissioners for the price of one.

As a quick historical note, people who were diagnosed as having multiple personality disorder used to be institutionalized. They now expect to be celebrated. 

But drop “police commissioner.” Mayor Gym will rechristen the job “peace commissioner,” because “police ” is triggering to so many criminals people.

As a matter of policy, to “dismantle the patriarchy,” Philadelphia’s first female mayor will hire no male for any leadership position. 

Gym will replace the managing director with a DIE director — Diversity, Inclusion, Equity.

Qualifications for a city job will become secondary to the applicant’s rank in the scale of oppression. 

Did you know the city has an Office of Black Male Engagement?. 

There is also an Office of Engagement for Women. And an Office of Youth Engagement. And an Office of Civic Engagement.

Since we so love overlap, why not  have an Office of Black Female Engagement? Why not Asians? Why not Hispanics? Why not Kurds?

Mayor Gym will fix that. She’ll have more engagements than Rev. Sun Myung Moon. 

The city currently hires ex-convicts “returning Philadelphians.”

Under new Inclusion rules, the city will hire current criminals. The idea is to disrupt the mythical “school to prison pipeline” by diverting criminals into city jobs. 

For many people, the City Rep is the face of Philadelphia. In a move regarded as species equity, Gym will appoint the Philly Phanatic, and will relocate the ballpark to the Phoenix State Correctional Institution campus, which will be vacant after all the prisoners are released following making a pinky swear that they will commit no more crimes.

Under terms negotiated with the Department of Justice, Bernie Madoff was named city treasurer, after declaring himself to be a woman of color and promising tens of billions of new revenue for the city. When asked where the money would come from, Madoff said, “It won’t be coming from the companies that are fleeing Philadelphia, I can tell you that.” Raising money is “not as hard as building the pyramids,” he said with a wink. 

Some of the new revenue will come from a reformed city wage tax, which will be doubled for white males, and be halved for everyone else.

People who claim status of either a) being marginalized, or b) illegal immigrants, will pay no taxes at all.

Gym’s chief of staff will be chosen by lottery of current high school dropouts.

Philadelphia’s chief educational officer, Mayor Gym says, will be required to close charter schools and install critical race theory in elementary schools, alongside gender studies beginning in pre-school among students still wearing diapers.

Streeteries will be allowed to continue, as long as they have unisex bathrooms, no smoking outdoors, and rename “hash browns” as “potatoes of color.”

There’s more, of course, which will be covered in future columns, assuming I am not arrested by Mayor Gym and charged with crimes against the state.