others were not so kind<\/a>. Billionaire Elon Musk and Texas Senator Ted Cruz \u2014\u00a0two right-wing national figures who have no experience in firefighting and have never run a fire department \u2014 questioned her experience anyway. These self-righteous, self-appointed experts in firefighting seem to think that because Bonsignore never fought a fire, she is therefore not qualified to be the fire commissioner.<\/p>\nThe truth is, many fire commissioners in the FDNY\u2019s history were not former firefighters themselves. In fact, two of Bonsignore\u2019s immediate and very successful predecessors, Laura Kavanagh and Robert Tucker, had business administrative and political backgrounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fire commissioner doesn\u2019t fight fires; they are responsible for overseeing the FDNY\u2019s 17,000 employees, including the 11,000 firefighters and officers who directly respond to emergencies every day, and keeping the city safe.<\/p>\n
If the broadsides from Musk and Cruz weren\u2019t bad enough, a former Republican Congress member from upstate New York, Nan Hayworth, took a homophobic shot at Bonsignore\u2019s sexuality in trying to compare her appointment to that of Kristin Crowley, a former Los Angeles fire chief who, like Bonsignore, happens to be lesbian.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorked out great for LA in January so why not,\u201d Hayworth wrote, making a sarcastic reference to the deadly wildfires that struck there a year ago. The remark was as deplorable as it gets.<\/p>\n
In the end, Mamdani\u2019s choice in Bonsignore was his to make. Time will tell whether Bonsignore will be up to the task, but her background with EMS \u2014 which, the new mayor noted, responds to more than 70% of all calls to the FDNY \u2014\u00a0suggests that she knows what it takes to fulfill the department\u2019s most basic mission: Saving New Yorkers\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n
As for the remarks from Musk, Cruz and Hayworth, they are just more examples of the vile, counterproductive rhetoric that has consumed social media and politics in general. It\u2019s one thing to voice genuine concern about something rooted in actual fact; it is another to ridicule someone based on their appearance or background.<\/p>\n
Such ridicule should be rejected and shunned. New York doesn\u2019t need the advice and consent of unserious people.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
In the new year ahead, let us all resolve to follow two golden rules that our parents and guardians taught us:\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
1.) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.\n<\/p>\n
2.) If you\u2019ve got nothing nice to say about someone, don\u2019t say it at all.\n<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s follow those rules and help restore some honor and dignity not just to social media and politics, but to our society as a whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk at the second inauguration of President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025. Photo by Kenny Holston\/The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[41599,128,41600,2411,9807,194,41601,41602,41603,40719,9,24,8975,63,20692,308,41604,7012,129,131,130,82],"class_list":["post-85486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-9-11-recovery","tag-bronx","tag-civic-discourse","tag-elon-musk","tag-emergency-medical-services","tag-fdny","tag-fire-commissioner","tag-leadership-appointment","tag-lgbtq-issues","tag-lillian-bonsignore","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-politics","tag-nyc","tag-political-criticism","tag-public-safety","tag-social-media-rhetoric","tag-ted-cruz","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2194353632.jpg\" "\\"Editorial")
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