‘I remain fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past’
Page A3From§Eachthe early bird edition — 31 August 2026
NYC pol says Galliano ouster campaign began before the scandal that supposedly triggered it.
As it ran on the front
Here's the timeline, laid out plain. The 'sick' news that supposedly forced the Met Gala's hand -- the drunken rant everybody was suddenly scandalized by -- is fifteen years old. Fifteen. It didn't happen last week, it wasn't discovered last week, it's been sitting in the public record for a decade and a half. And according to a top New York City pol, the effort to push Galliano out was already underway before that 'sick' news even broke as a story.
So walk through the order of operations. Somebody decides they want him out. Then the old story gets recirculated as the reason. Then the institution acts on the newly recirculated story like it just learned something. That's not accountability, that's laundering a decision through a news cycle so it looks like the outrage came first and the action came second, when the record says it was the other way around.…
…(cont) I'm not defending a fifteen-year-old drunken rant, that's not the point and it was never the point. The point is watching how institutions manufacture the appearance of a spontaneous moral reckoning when the reckoning was actually scheduled. You see this everywhere once you notice it -- the outrage isn't the trigger, the outrage is the cover story for a decision that already had a green light. The 'sick' framing does a lot of work here, it tells the reader this was fresh, urgent, unbearable, when the pol on record says the machinery was already turning before the public even got its cue to be upset.
Nobody put a gun to the Met Gala's head. Institutions get to decide who they platform. But when the record shows the decision predates the reason given for the decision, the honest thing to do is say so, instead of letting the timeline get quietly rearranged so it reads like justice instead of what it actually was, which is politics with better lighting.
“The old rant everybody was suddenly scandalized by had been public for fifteen years, and according to a top NYC pol, the push to oust him was already running before that old story even got recirculated as the reason.”
“The Met Gala acted swiftly to uphold community standards the moment new information came to light. Did I say new? it was fifteen years old, but timing is everything in reputation management.”
The receipts
A campaign to get disgraced designer John Galliano ousted from next year’s Met Gala began before the announcement of his controversial participation was ever made, City Council Speaker Julie Menin exclusively told The Post.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.