Nicely done, Seth.
On Wednesday night, [Cory] Booker crosses the state line in his SUV to attend the comedy show on the top floor of Finnegan’s Wake, a brick-walled pub in South Philadelphia. The dozen or so tables set aside for local politicians and donors to a children’s charity slowly fill up as waitresses deliver bottles of beer and gin and tonics in clear plastic glasses. Booker enters, pauses for photos and grips a bottle of water. He looks around in disbelief through an hour of stripper, Viagra and masturbation jokes but perks up when Philly’s District Attorney Seth Williams begins a riff on the prodigious Twitter account of “Pennsylvania’s future third senator” — shorthand for Booker.
“It’s been a full-time job for me just keeping up with him,” Williams says. “He’s tweeting every, what, 20 seconds? . . . It’s like every other second, he saved a woman out of a burning house. He was in a helicopter and went down in raging waters during superstorm Sandy. There was a panda where a train fell over at the zoo. He got the panda inseminated, all types of stuff. He is a true hero. Hero!”
Finally, Booker takes the stage. He stands in front of the brick wall and notes that “I’ve never ever been accused of inseminating a panda before tonight. . . . My staff literally said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ ” He tells some safe, crowd-pleasing sports jokes and attributes his presence in a state absent of Jersey voters to his “perfunctory profession of prodigious pandering.” He jokes about the triteness of comparisons with Obama. “President Obama left school to become a community organizer. I left school to become a neighborhood coordinator. . . . President Obama was born in the United States of America, I was born in Washington, D.C.”
Also, from the Post profile:
He is partial to quoting Winston Churchill and using rhetorical flourishes, such as “Touché, mon capitaine.” He says goodbye to the [Greek] diner owners in Greek, chats with an Ecuadorean patron in Spanish and wishes a Jewish reporter happy holidays in Hebrew.
He’s going to be an interesting senator, that’s for sure. Apparently, he’s going to get a place in a poor, black neighborhood in the District, too. It’s not a stunt. He spent eight years living in a Newark housing project without heat or hot water. I think he likes living that way. I think he defies caricature. He’s totally unique.
Good for him, but Winston Churchill is not someone you should often quote approvingly.
Why?
He said plenty of quotable things.
Indeed he did. But aside from his political leadership against Hitler, everything I’ve ever learned about him has made me think of him negatively.
well, too be fair, the hitler thing was kind of a big deal.
Wrong ! ! Yeah the “Hitler Thing” was a big deal but none of it is to Winston’s credit. GFC, England was being attacked by Germany. Churchill followed Neville Chamberlain. Anyone with a stiff spine could have followed Chamberlain.
You “…think he defies caricature. He’s totally unique?”
But this post is a “caricature” of sorts. There is not a successful national pol in the U.S. who is not in some way a self-caricature. In Reality TV America, a true, full picture of any pol would alienate so many of the potentially truly important voters…you know, the 20% or 30% that are “undecided”, the ones that really count when (
putsch comes to fix) errr, ahhh, push comes to shove…that no one who really wants to win would even consider being real.Well…Ron Paul, but you know where that got him.
This guy does nothing that is not politically motivated. That’s why he has been so successful.
So far.
We shall see.
Can he stand up to the national spotlight? The one that sees right through any front that is not extraordinarily well constructed?
We shall see.
We shall all see.
Soon enough.
My own bet?
I don’t think so.
His ambition is already too naked.
Too needy.
He makes Chris Christie look reserved in that respect.
Watch.
Wait’ll his underwear starts to show.
Watch.
AG
From Drudge Report, 2:53 PM EST 8/27/13:
Of course…the linked story has little or nothing to do with any allegations that Booker is…or isn’t…”gay.” But the X-Ray boyos are already on his case.
Bet on it.
What a bullshit country we have become.
Later…
AG
As if New Jersey gives a fuck.
If it…whichever “it” you are referencing here…was only about New Jersey hardly anyone would be giving much of a fuck about either Chris Christie or Cory Booker.
But it’s not.
They have both constructed…or have had constructed for them…national identities and organizations. 2016 is on already.
It’s on.
Christie for RatPub Prez, Booker for DemRat vice-prez/stand-in for Obama to keep the minority vote for Hillary/prevent or at the very least soften the blow to the Dems in NJ if Christie is the Rat nominee.
Is that what’s going to happen?
Who knows? “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and lip” said my wise old Irish grandmother, but that’s what some people want to have happen. Powerful people. Powerful enough to raise both of them to national position.
Bet on it.
Watch.
AG
What’s Jim McGreevey up to these days? A better Democrat than Booker, but …
He seems like a guy who might actually be able to get some of his Senate colleagues to look at poverty in a new way. Having the real world experience of living in poor neighborhoods that most Senators have never even been to will give him real authority on these issues. And his establishment/elite credentials will comfort and allow them to really listen to him on these issues.
I’m looking forward to seeing Booker at work on the national stage.
Steve Lonegan really can’t pass up an opportunity to be an asshole: