MAYOR COMPARES PROTESTERS TO TERRORISTS

Mayor Bloomberg compared some of the protesters who descended on New York to the 9/11 terrorists and blasted those who were harassing delegates as intent on “destroying our city.”

Mr. Bloomberg took aim at protester groups known as the “A31 Coalition” which had planned a series of marches on Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. The protesters tried to block 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue and were quickly arrested by police. Ultimately police had to close the Herald Square subway station to get a handle on the situation.

Though hundreds of the anarchists were arrested Tuesday night, those who escaped from the police took to taunting delegates, yelling profanities, and spitting on them, according to City Hall officials. That kind of behavior was hurting New York City, Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday.

“A handful of people have tried to destroy our city by going up and yelling at visitors here because they don’t agree with their views,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at a school in Midtown yesterday.

They aren’t allowing delegates to express themselves, he added, and “that’s exactly what the terrorists did, if you think about it, at 9/11. This is not the same kind of terrorism, but there is no question these anarchists are afraid to let people speak out.”

When asked if the mayor really meant to compare the protesters with terrorists, Mr. Bloomberg’s spokesman, Ed Skyler, said that “scaring or harass 370 850 483 866ing delegates, or trying to prevent them from going to the Garden, is an attempt to take away their rights and its deplorable behavior.”

To prove his point, he included a definition of terrorism fromdictionary.com: “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”

– Dina Temple-Raston

MARY CHENEY SAYS ‘NO THANKS’

She wasn’t there, OK? Get used to it.

It was a choice, and nothing more, that kept Mary Cheney off the stage after her father, Vice President Cheney, spoke to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night.

“It was a personal decision. She chose not to,” said a Cheney campaign spokeswoman, Anne Womack.

Ms. Cheney, whose sexuality has attracted more press attention than Jenna Jameson’s (almost), watched the convention speech with her family from the vice president’s seating area, but she did not join her parents and sister for the on-stage kiss-and-cry.

Ms. Cheney has been actively involved in the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, where she holds the title of director of V.P. operations. “She has chosen a role that’s more behind the scenes. She’s a private person,” said Ms. Womack.

– Pia Catton

BUSY CHEF FEEDS GOP

There have been plenty of busy people running around the city this week, but perhaps none more so than Timothy McLaughlin. As of last night, he had cooked for 16,000.

With 22 events booked over five days, the culinary whiz was among those chiefly responsible for keeping the Republicans well fed while they were here. Mr. McLaughlin is the executive chef for Restaurant Associates’ catering division, which snagged some of the week’s biggest bashes.

While he says the out-of-town politicos were good sports about sampling the city’s diverse fare, some delegations, like Massachusetts, stuck to favorites from their home states. On the whole, Mr. McLaughlin said, the Republicans had, well, conservative taste.

“I thought it would have been more high-end,” he said of the requests from state delegations. Yet that did not limit the menus, which still managed to include such creations as cedar plank roasted salmon with lemon mousseline and almond-crusted chicken served with saffron couscous, braised artichokes, and tomato chutney.

“We’ve had a lot of fun with desserts,” said Mr. McLaughlin, who added that a line of elephant-shaped ‘Republican’ cookies were a hit with delegates at a reception honoring convention CEO Bill Harris on Saturday night.

For Mr. McLaughlin, the challenge was the sheer volume of work, which started each day at 7 a.m. and ended after the post-convention parties clear out early the next morning. He and his team of caterers began planning for each event more than a year ago, working out logistics and deciding on menus.

While 16,000 meals over five days has been Mr. McLaughlin’s toughest kitchen crunch, he is no stranger to big events. He’s cooked at the U.S. Open tennis tournament for the last seven years and was the official caterer for the USA House at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Still, a national political convention adds a bit more spice. “This is a much higher-level crowd,” he said. “All of these people are out there on TV, and at night we’re feeding them.

– Russell Berman

PROTESTERS REDWASH FOUNTAINS

Days of mostly nonviolent protest against the convention ended with a blood-red splash yesterday afternoon. Luckily, there was no real blood involved – just blood-colored water.

In the early afternoon, fountains around the city began gushing red “to symbolize the blood, murders and deaths…at the hands of the Bush administration,” a post on the activist Web site indymedia.org said. The action was the work of anonymous groups, according to a spokesman for A31, an alliance of protesters.

A Parks Department official referred to the dyeing as “vandalism” and said that tests by the DEP had found no toxins in the colored water of eight city fountains, including those at Union Square, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At around 1:45 p.m., as area employees returned from their lunch breaks, police and Parks officials evacuated City Hall Park while jets of dark red water shot from the ornate Jacob Wrey Mould Fountain. After an investigator in a black Hazmat suit tested the water, the park was reopened and a team of workers began draining the fountain.

Later, 18-year-old Pablo Velilla leaned on the fountain’s edge, smiling at the blood-red puddles that remained. “It gets people’s attention and it kinda makes sense, because I think this war was Bush’s personal war,” he said. “Plus, with this, nobody gets hurt and you get your voice heard.”

As workers scrubbed the fountain with powerful hoses, an unimpressed Joe Scharff sat on a bench nearby, wearing a sticker with a “W” crossed out. “It’s wrong. You don’t deface city property,” he said. “Peaceful demonstrations are fine-I marched in one on Sunday-but I don’t believe in doing damage or just starting fights.”

– Alex Pasternack

VIETNAM VETS PROTEST WAR’S COST

Vietnam Veterans Against the War was once a thriving protest group with 30,000 members. Today, there are about 1,000 members left, and a few of the stragglers turned out yesterday to protest the war in Iraq, the Bush administration – and even their former leader, Senator Kerry.

The group, along with similar antiwar organizations, hosted a 12-hour vigil for the Iraq war casualties yesterday at Union Square.

VVAW, founded in 1967, has dwindled from its early 1970s high. Thirty three years after Mr. Kerry testified before Congress against the conflict in Vietnam, his testimony criticizing that military action continues to shape the group’s message.

“One of the things that stuck with me back in 1971 from Kerry’s speech to Congress is he asked, ‘How do you ask any man to be the last man to die for a mistake?'” said Igor Bobrowsky, 58, a decorated Vietnam veteran and government contractor. “I think the question today is much more pointed: How do you ask any man to be the last many to die for a lie?” Still, Mr. Kerry is no hero among many of the Vietnam vets.

“Kerry is not especially popular,” said Ben Chitty, 57, a secretary of the group, who works at the CUNY library. Of the members, he said, about half support the Democratic candidate and the other half are just supporting anyone other than President Bush. Mr. Chitty said that’s because Mr. Kerry’s stance on the Iraq war “stinks.”

Some of the antipathy dates back to the early 1970s, he said, when, not long after testifying, Mr. Kerry took a job with Senator Kennedy and left the group as it began to shift further to the left. “He left us in kind of a disagreement,” Mr. Chitty said.

Still, one thing Mr. Chitty said the group’s member agree on is that the advertisements by the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth are wrong.

“These guys are crackpots, lunatics, and Vietnam veterans who are bitter people that have never figured out how to come to terms with what they were asked to do,” Mr. Chitty said, adding, “And I think they represent a significant number of Vietnam veterans.”

– Daniela Gerson

ANDRE 3000’S FILM CREW GETS THROWN IN LOCK-UP

A snappily dressed man, clad in bow tie and vest, roved among dozens of disheveled protesters who had just been released from jail and were gathered across the street from Manhattan Criminal Court to smoke their first cigarettes in days.

No, the man wasn’t a lawyer looking for clients. He was none other than Andre Benjamin, of Outkast, and he was looking for members of his film crew who got locked up in a mass arrest of protesters near Ground Zero on Tuesday.

Mr. Benjamin, 29, said that he has never voted, and his film-in-the-making is all about “getting young people to vote in the political process.” The documentary features interviews with the Bush twins and Senator Clinton, and he plans to air it on HBO shortly before the November 2 presidential election.

Mr. Benjamin suffered a temporary setback when two of his crewmembers got locked up in a mass arrest, their film equipment confiscated. Flanked by stocky bodyguards, Mr. Benjamin arrived on the scene as crew member Michael Schiller was released, but Shana Rigby was still locked up, her exact whereabouts unknown.

Mr. Benjamin said he was never slated to perform at the Republican National Convention, as rumors suggest, but he didn’t mind Jenna Bush quoting his “shake it like a Polaroid picture” lyrics on the stage of Madison Square Garden Tuesday night.

“I think that’s cool that she’s a fan,” said Mr. Benjamin, who referred to Jenna and Barbara as “cool people.”

– Aaron Smith