NY Times: Mayor Bloomberg Hosts Own 'Celebrity Apprentice'

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More than 450 applicants vied this year for the prestigious 152 internships available in New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's City Hall.  Thanks to The New York Times, readers know the selection processwas above-board, with the scion of any captain of industry, media mogul, high-ranking politician or celebrity having as good a chance to land one of the plum positions as any other child of the connected.

A sluggish three months after The New York Times requested a list of the interns under New York's Freedom of Information Law [Pub. Off. Law Sec. 87 et seq.], which is modeled after the federal Freedom of Information Act [5 U.S.C. sec. 552 et seq.], the Mayor's office produced the list of names, which appears to have been photocopied from the Social Register.

There's 2003 high school intern Alexander Blankfein, son of Goldman Sachs' cuddly chief executive Lloyd C. Blankfein, and Jacob Doctoroff, whose daddy, Daniel L. Doctoroff, is a former deputy mayor and current president of Bloomberg LLP. Jacob was an intern in 2002 as an eighth grader, where he brought a youthful perspective to running the city that never sleeps.

The city's Health & Hospitals Corp. President Alan D. Aviles surely beamed with pride when his daughter Louisa interned in 2007 in the Community Affairs Unit.  Playwright Neil Simon's stepson, and the offspring of CBS Chief Executive Laurence A. Tisch and Blackstone Group co-founder Peter G. Peterson made the list. So too did 2007 intern Luke Russert, son of the late NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert.

A spokesperson for the Mayor's office, in his best damage-control voice, noted that the progeny of the powerful make up a tiny fraction of the nearly 1,500 internships that have been filled since Mayor Bloomberg took a pay cut to occupy City Hall.  It must be hell for the interns having to decide what to wear at the Gracie Mansion summer bbqs.