Mayor Tells Reporters It's 'Up to You' If You Have a Filthy Ass

Trying to pin down Mayor Zohran Mamdani for not being like other mayors? He will literally get your ass.

Yesterday, the mayor announced the installation of 17 new public toilets across the five boroughs. These "Throne Labs" are spartan, modular units that require a fraction of the cost and infrastructure of typical public restrooms, and are designed to encourage the user to stay on task: after a 10-minute time limit, the door to the toilet slides open. (We're going to use one—check back for our coverage later.)

Reporters at the press conference for the new bathrooms couldn't contain themselves.

"Didja ever put the bidets in Gracie Mansion?" one asked.

This was a reference to Mamdani's third week in office, shortly after he decided that he and his wife would live at the official mayoral residence on the Upper East Side, and he said he was looking at adopting a cat, and also, installing some bidets. 

If, like many Americans, your experience with bidets conjures that scene in "Crocodile Dundee"—limited, provincial, snickering—then this line of questioning hits hard. Bidets are effete, superfluous. They sound expensive. If regular toilets worked just fine for George Washington and John Lindsay, why complicate things? Why elevate yourself over the common, unwashed ass?

At the time, we knew this was all nonsense, and we urged the mayor to embrace Bidet Socialism—we even gave him a list of some of the best models to check out. If anyone deserves a few seconds of quiet luxury, it's the person with the toughest job in the country. Who knows what kind of intractable problems might benefit from the contemplation aided by the warm spritz of the TOTO Washlet S5? There are no time limits on the bathrooms in Gracie Mansion.

Mayor Mamdani could have shrugged off Wednesday's bidet question, or launched into a fiery justification of Bidet Socialism, but those paths would have just garnered more questions, more pointless headlines.

Instead, he sprung his trap.