Nova Iorque. É dia de eleições, alguém faça o favor de acordar Bill de Blasio a horas. Bill de Blasio: a late-rising night owl for mayor of the city that never sleeps.

Nova Iorque. É dia de eleições, alguém faça o favor de acordar Bill de Blasio a horas

Por Sara Sanz Pinto

publicado em 5 Nov 2013 in (jornal) i online

O democrata lidera quase todos os segmentos do eleitorado da cidade: homens e mulheres, brancos, negros e latinos, novos e velhos

Hoje à noite, Bill de Blasio será muito provavelmente eleito mayor (presidente da câmara) de Nova Iorque. O problema não está na vitória contra o republicano Joe Lhota, que segundo as sondagens parece estar garantida, mas sim antes, caso não acorde a tempo. A ansiedade do momento pode fazer com que na véspera se deite ainda mais tarde do que é costume, fazendo com que adormeça de manhã e chegue outra vez atrasado para os compromissos.

Ao contrário da maioria dos políticos, o democrata garante funcionar melhor à noite, não tem qualquer problema em afirmá-lo publicamente e disse inclusive ao blogue Politicker "que se devia reorientar a sociedade para ficar acordada até mais tarde", embora ache que tal mudança não vai acontecer para já. As explicações de Blasio surgiram após o candidato ter chegado atrasado a um comício, agendado para as 11h30 da manhã de sexta-feira, deixando dezenas de apoiantes e jornalistas à espera.

"Fiz o quê?", respondeu na tarde do mesmo dia, durante o evento seguinte, quando lhe perguntaram se o atraso se tinha devido a ter-se deixado dormir. "Recebi uma chamada às cinco da manhã que me trocou os sonos. Mas, fora isso, está tudo bem. Não diria que simplesmente me deixei dormir, diria que foi um sono por turnos", explicou, recusando-se a dar mais pormenores sobre a chamada telefónica.

Joe Lhota, que conta apenas com 24% das intenções de voto, contra os 65% do democrata - de acordo com uma sondagem recente da NBC 4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist -, não perdeu tempo a tentar capitalizar o desfasamento do relógio biológico do rival. "Estou farto de dizer que o Bill de Blasio não está preparado para ser mayor", afirmou em campanha. "Não se consegue levantar às três da manhã? Os autarcas recebem telefonemas às cinco da manhã, às três da manhã? Ser autarca é um trabalho de 24 horas por dia." Já o mayor cessante, Michael Bloomberg, aproveitou a ocasião para se vangloriar dos seus exemplares hábitos de trabalho, acrescentado que parte do seu êxito político e financeiro se deve à sua rotina. "Sempre tentei ser o primeiro a chegar e o último a sair, tirar o menor número de dias de férias e gastar o mínimo de tempo possível a ir almoçar ou na casa de banho", disse em entrevista à radio.

"Desde as primárias (o sistema eleitoral local americano é semelhante ao presidencial) que o Lhota devia ter alterado o carácter da sua campanha e não o conseguiu fazer", afirmou Lee Miringoff, director do Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, à NBC. Da sondagem, realizada entre terça e sexta-feira da semana passada, apenas 8% dos eleitores admitiram que poderiam vir a mudar de ideias, enquanto apenas 1% estava ainda indeciso em quem votar.

Com uma mensagem populista, centrada nas desigualdades e nas frustrações, o democrata apostou numa campanha transparente, destacando, entre outras coisas, a sua família multirracial. A abordagem valeu-lhe a liderança de quase todos os segmentos do eleitorado nova-iorquino: homens e mulheres, brancos, negros e latinos, novos e velhos, em todos os municípios A vantagem é tão grande que até os apoiantes do republicano dão a votação como perdida - oito em cada dez afirmam que é Bill de Blasio quem vai ganhar.

Bill de Blasio: 'I think we should reorient our society [to] staying up late, but I don't think that's happening right now.' Photograph: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis

Bill de Blasio: a late-rising night owl for mayor of the city that never sleeps

The presumptive winner of tomorrow's election admits he's 'not a morning person'. Night owls of the world, your leader has arrived!

Posted by

Oliver Burkeman

Monday 4 November 2013 / http://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/nov/04/bill-de-blasio-night-owl-vs-morning-bird

On Tuesday night – barring a zombie apocalypse, or similarly unlikely event – Bill de Blasio will become mayor of New York. Of course, we can't know if his administration will deliver on its promise to make the interests of low- and middle-income New Yorkers central to the city's future. But it's worth marking one small way in which his mayoralty will definitely strike a blow for a put-upon segment of society. Almost uniquely among high-profile politicians, De Blasio is a night owl, and he's not afraid to admit it.

This Saturday, the candidate showed up for an 11.30am rally an hour late, blaming a 5am phone call that "threw off my sleep cycle". Last week, Politicker cited emails showing that, in his role as public advocate, De Blasio "sometimes had difficulty waking up in the morning … leaving staffers waiting for hours outside his home or showing up late to morning events he had been scheduled to attend." "I am not a morning person," De Blasio observed at the weekend. "I think we should reorient our society [to] staying up late, but I don't think that's happening right now."

De Blasio's no-hoper Republican rival, Joe Lhota, leapt at his last desperate chance to claw back a few votes. "I've been saying over and over again that Bill de Blasio's not prepared to be mayor," he said, according to a Daily News report. "You can't get up in the morning? Mayors get phone calls at five o'clock in the morning. Mayors get pone calls at three o'clock. God forbid a police officer was hurt or a firefighter was hurt … being mayor is a 24-hour-a-day job." Five in the morning, he went on, was "about the time that I get up every day, actually."

Let's set aside the irony of being lectured on punctuality by the man who used to be responsible for the G train. What's more interesting about Lhota's comments is how they crystallise our era's twin prejudices on the subject of sleep. The first is that you shouldn't need much of it, especially if you want to be a high-achieving public figure. The second is that if you absolutely must power-down for a few hours, you should do it by going to bed early, not sleeping late. Either way, by 5am or thereabouts, you should be getting things done. "I always tried to be the first one in in the morning and the last one to leave at night," the current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said recently. (He added that he tried to take fewer bathroom breaks than his co-workers too. Thanks for the information.)

I'm a morning person myself, never happier than when life allows me to get down to work by around 7.15am, writing hard until early afternoon but producing little of value thereafter. In a recent article on the routines of history's most creative figures, I even recommended getting up early if you want to emulate them. But even I can see that our pro-lark, anti-owl prejudice has reached absurd proportions. Celebrities and executives who might otherwise decline to reveal details of their private lives are only too happy to brag about when they get up. That's how we know about Anna Wintour's 5.45am tennis matches, Tim Cook's 4.30am emails, Gwyneth Paltrow's 4.30am yoga asanas, Condoleezza Rice's 4.30am workouts, and the rest.

Yet the research on the benefits and disadvantages of having a larkish or an owlish "chronotype" is all over the place. One longitudinal study found no health or socioeconomic benefits associated with rising early; another found that night owls had lower test scores, but still another concluded that they displayed higher intelligence. Evening types may be more prone to addiction, even psychopathy, but then again, they're more imaginative and maybe wealthier … and so on. (I found many of those links via Overcoming Bias.) Meanwhile, self-help types who echo Benjamin Franklin on the benefits of early rising are usually making an elementary error: sure, it's probably best to do your most important work early in your day, before your energy's depleted and the interruptions have mounted, but it doesn't follow that your day needs to start early relative to other people's. One thing we do know is that "short sleepers" – the people who can truly flourish on five or so hours a night – are a tiny minority of the population. And nobody should want their political leaders pretending to be short sleepers if they really aren't.

In his recent book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Jonathan Crary argues that sleep is one of the few remaining zones of opposition to consumer capitalism – the last place we can't be data-mined and advertised to, and an aspect of daily life that corporations can't entirely eliminate in favour of working and shopping. Perhaps De Blasio's sleep habits are more subversive than he realises.

In any case – and this is probably my favourite bit of research in the entire field of sleep – many of those alleged 4.30am risers may be lying. Some years ago, the University of California researcher Daniel Kripke attached motion sensors to subjects' wrists. Those claiming to be up by 4am accounted for 5%, but the sensors suggested that none were; 10% claimed to be up by 5am, but the sensors indicated that only 5% were. Bill de Blasio shouldn't feel too guilty if, following his victory party tomorrow night, he spends Wednesday morning sleeping in.