Column by Lenore Skenazy

That's the ticket

'Hhsssss' coming from the Olympic bubble is music to my ears

Just before New York's Olympic bid flickered back to life, thanks to a possible "Plan B," the NYC2012 crew had the audacity to say that New York - not New York's Olympic planners - looked bad.

"To have the city's Olympic bid jeopardized by this kind of negative politics ... has shown New York in the worst possible light," said Jay Kriegel, the Olympic committee's director.

In other words: The defeat of their lousy plan showed New York in a bad light.

Me, I thought the lousy plan itself showed New York in a bad light.

As did the fact that the mayor and his deputy, Dan Doctoroff, had been attempting to shove it down our throats for three years.

But perhaps most galling of all was the fact that they were the ones who stubbornly stuck to a "Plan A" that was so fragile, so based on wishful thinking and so utterly disdainful of anything outside of Manhattan that all it took was one measly little vote - not even a vote, an abstention - to kick it to the ground.

When, at last, an atom of democracy seeped into this political vacuum, the whole thing exploded.

This giant "hssssssss" coming from the Olympic bubble is music to the ears of all of us average citizens who were completely ignored during this juggernaut.

Sure there were some public hearings. I went to the one at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Reminded me of a Soviet show trial.

I went to see Doctoroff when he came to the Daily News to push the stadium, too. Every objection seemed to be dismissed as the petty concern of a lesser mortal.

As Billionaire A was gift-wrapping the West Side for Billionaire B, we average Joes were stuck behind a glass wall, pounding and shouting to no avail as the moguls popped the champagne.

Pretty soon Big Brother-like banners were hung throughout the city: "There will be dancing in the streets." (Italics mine.)

Stickers were stuck on the subway cars. (And who, pray tell, will pay to scrape them off?)

The Bloomy/Doctoroff team did everything but force us to march down Fifth Ave. wearing, "We the stadium" sashes.

If you really wanted to see New York in "the worst possible light" - not to mention "negative politics" at work - all you had to do was look at the past three years, and how the will of the people was ignored by the unelected Doctoroff and a mayor sorely suffering from obsessive-Olympics disorder.

For all of us citizens who felt completely sidelined, who marveled at Doctoroff jetting all over the world to push a plan we never gave a thumbs-up to, who rooted for an Olympic-size upset, happy days are here.

If this keeps up, there will be dancing in the streets.