Kushner Pursuing Coveted Gambler Demo
Yesterday real estate scion Jared Kushner bragged in an interview with Portfolio's Lloyd Grove that his New York Observer has "the smartest readership probably in the world of any publication." That must explain why the paper published an editorial aimed squarely at its ultra-sophisticated audience—OTB regulars who weekly blow their social security checks on horse races. Let's hear it for filthy dens of misery frequented by the city's most disenfranchised!
It's not that OTB outlets take advantage of the city's most vulnerable that's turned off readers of the salmon-colored paper, of course. Most people who live in Observer-land would tell you the betting parlors are eye sores and nuisances: There's really nothing that delicate society fixtures like less than drunk men urinating on the side of their buildings and trying to cop a feel when women walk past. And so they've been generally supportive of the Mayor's plan to shut them down.
But bucking popular sentiment, the Kushner-owned rag published a defense of the unsavory-character-magnets today: State government ought to "make a deal with the mayor that satisfies his concerns about the agency's revenue stream" and permit the joints' continued existence, the paper urges. No doubt OTB addicts were thrilled by the expression of support when they read the paper's editorial page over croissants and espresso this morning—as they no doubt do every Wednesday, right after reading George Gurley and Spencer Morgan, of course.
