(Screengrab from nypost.com)

Since Sunday, when The New York Times published a cover story about Bill de Blasio’s 1988 trip to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine, and noted his admiration for the Sandinistas, the right-wing press has been salivating: in the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor they think they finally have the “socialist” that they could only pretend Obama was.

And there’s a bonus: They can also get Bill de Blasio to play the Bill Ayers role. As a New York Post headline put it, “Obama to meet Sandinista-supporting de Blasio.”

Although the Times piece dug up details on de Blasio’s youthful non-indiscretions, none of it is truly “news” (as the Times’s Michael Powell later not>ed; nor was it hidden (de Blasio spoke publicly about his time in Nicaraguan just last December). But the Postis excitedly fishing with every bit of red-bait they can muster, no matter how much it may embarrass them.

The virulently anti-union tabloid has even had to make like they support unions. In “de Blasio’s beloved Nicaragua,” the Post writes (going on to quote the human-rights watchdog group Freedom House), “Employees have reportedly been dismissed for union activities, and citizens have no effective recourse when labor laws are violated by those in power.” Those may sound like the tactics of the right’s beloved governors Scott Walker (Wisconsin) and John Kasich (Ohio), but the chance to spark suspicion trumps principle every time.

Recounting the radical acts the young de Blasio was capable of, the Post says, “He also castigated the operators of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor—three years after the accident—for being ‘ignorant.’”

The implication is not only that the operators didn’t deserve such harsh words, but that de Blasio failed to deliver them in a timely manner—something the Post, without a hint of irony, is reporting on three decades after the offense.

But by far the most embarrassing thing the Post has published (maybe ever) is a time-warped attempt to cast the college-age de Blasio as a druggy hippie and part of the “activist set.”

 

Far out, man—I might be your mayor soon.

City Hall hopeful Bill de Blasio was a much scruffier dude back in his college days, with a hairdo almost as distinctive as son Dante’s Afro, a beard to match and a far-away gaze.

This NYU yearbook photo…indicates that ties were not in style among the school’s activist set.

De Blasio was quite the whippersnapper, let me tell you.

But luckily, his Republican rival, Joe Lhota, provides a glimpse of his yearbook photo in this ad, and the Post should have nothing to complain about.