Look, I don’t know what in the fuck about T-Bone or whether Cory Booker made the shit up. But Cory Booker has a 35 point lead in the polls, and that probably underestimates his advantage. If the National Review thinks that they are going to turn that around by calling into question a story that Booker started telling fifteen years ago, then we have nothing to worry about from the National Review.
We can start with Booker’s defense.
Newark mayor Cory Booker isn’t backing down from his insistence that the drug dealer T-Bone, whom he told several audiences in emotional stump speeches prior to 2008 had threatened his life before befriending him, is real. Not only that, Booker told NJTV’s Michael Aron, but T-Bone was merely one of “literally hundreds” of drug dealers to whom he has lent a hand while living in Newark. Some of them, he says, were even temporary roommates…
To put this in perspective, back in 1998 when Booker supposedly knew a drug-dealer named T-Bone, he went on a 10-day hunger strike, lived in a tent and then a trailer in the open-air drug sale areas of the Newark in order to bring attention to the problem. When accused of fabricating a story about knowing a drug dealer, he defends himself by saying that he knows hundreds of them and even invited some to be his roommates. The Republicans aren’t undermining his credibility; they’re giving him an opportunity to bolster his brand. There isn’t a Mary Magdalene that Booker isn’t ready to befriend. He’ll pull you out of a burning building. He’ll shovel your aging father’s sidewalk. If you lose power in a storm, he’ll invite you to sleep on his floor. Got a problem? Send him a Tweet and he’ll gladly don his cape.
Why even try to fuck with him? Star high school football player wins scholarship to Stanford and becomes class president. A Rhodes Scholar with honors. A Yale law degree. Then he pitches a tent in the middle of the most crime-riddled part of Newark and goes on a hunger strike to protest what’s going on with the have-nots. Somehow wins a seat on the city council and becomes the mayor. Then wins the nomination of the Democratic Party for a U.S. Senate seat.
And you want to quibble about the literal veracity of a story about some guy named T-Bone? This guy can tell you a thousand stories about people with different names, like all the people he met at Stanford, Oxford, and Yale who are too busy cashing in to notice what is going on in our inner cities.
So, there are a lot of Cory Booker critics who can fuck off. On the right and the left.
He’s not above criticism, but in a lot of ways he is without peer.
So, there are a lot of Cory Booker critics who can fuck off. On the right and the left.
Doing both sides do it crap now, are we? Could you please give examples of Cory Booker’s critics on the left and why they are bullpucky? Like linking to specific things.
How about you?
Try reading anything by Alex Pareene, for starters. Booker is driving a lot of normally levelheaded leftie pundits around the bend, for some strange reason. It’s becoming a bit of a mania. People need to put him in perspective, as BooMan does here.
He has critics on the left.
That he’s a friend of Wall St., that he’s a centrist, etc.
Saying that Booker’s critics on both sides can go f themselves isn’t the same thing as saying that Democrats are super evil and do the same bad stuff as Republicans.
Take a step back, take a deep breath, and try again.
So, there are a lot of Cory Booker critics who can fuck off. On the right and the left.
Meh. Cory Booker is an up-and-coming politician in a Northeastern state who has been prepping for years to get a job promotion out of local politics and into national politics. To be shocked, shocked I tell you, that he’s been bought off by Wall St. is idiotic. It’s about as surprising as discovering that he has a pulse.
To expect any leadership out of him in fixing the reforms it would take to pull the US economy out of the control of the FIRE sector and put it back on some kind of a sound footing would be a foolish waste of time — but then the same thing could be said for the rest of the Senate (with the possible exception of Liz Warren and that premise still remains to be proven) so no surprise there. At the end of the day he will probably end up a better Senator than anything else the dog’s breakfast that is the New Jersey Democratic Party could have barfed up so we can be glad of that.
If the left had the kind of power base it would take to put a better politician than Booker in contention for that seat, then we could have an interesting discussion. Then the comparisons would matter. But the left doesn’t have that kind of power, doesn’t have any power at all in fact. At the end of the day the Cory Booker critics on the left are just as much a waste of pixels as the Cory Booker critics on the right.
YES VidaLoca!!!
You nailed it. And funny, too. You made my morning.
Thank you.
AG
The last time the NJ Democratic Party barfed up a really good senator was when they gave us Bill Bradley. Remember when he took over the job of writing Reagan’s 1986 tax reform? Remember when Congress actually worked?
To expect a NJ politician to be hostile to Wall Street is as absurd as asking a Utah politician to be hostile to Mormons, but that doesn’t mean that Booker is going to all about padding the pockets of rich people. That has never been what drives him.
So, in the wake of the successful shitcanning of Summers’ Fed nomination, VidaLoca turns up their nose and sniffs at the effective leadership of Senator Warren on economic issues, and completely discounts the important works from Senators Brown, Merkley, Sanders and many others in Congress.
For me, this puts VidaLoca’s criticisms of Mayor Booker in helpful context.
Glen Ford: Cory Booker is the Great Black Hope for the Rich Men of America
Cory Booker spends as much time self-promoting as he does working in the mayor’s office. He spends more time tweeting than actually discussing policy. Does the man who has one publicity stunt after another up his sleeve truly have the interests of the people at heart? That’s the question being asked by Glen Ford at The Black Agenda Report and one that leads us to wonder if Booker is the great black hope being controlled by his oppressive baby sitters:
The Lords of Capital have more than one Great Black Hope. “If there had been no Barack Obama, Cory Booker would have been Wall Street’s choice as the First Black President.” Newark’s mayor is fiercely loyal to his friends in the ruling class. “One thing Cory Booker cannot abide is anyone bad-mouthing his rich people.
Now that Barack Obama is a lame duck who can’t run for the top office anymore, it’s as good a time as any to speculate on who will take his place as the Black politician that rich white folks feel they can truly trust. One name stands out: Cory Booker, the 43 year-old Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, whose rightwing background and connections are far deeper and more intensely ideological than Obama’s. Indeed, if there had been no Barack Obama, Cory Booker would have been Wall Street’s choice as the First Black President. “He’ll be our second,” said a New York hedge fund partner, quoted in a recentBloomberg News article.
The Lords of Capital love “Cory,” and call him by his first name. That’s how he raised $7 million to win Newark’s City Hall for the second time, in 2010. He has since amassed more than $250 million from wealthy capitalists, including the founder of Facebook, mainly for the Newark public schools. They’re willing to pile all this cash on Booker’s plate because he is ideologically committed to the privatization of public education and to government that serves the rich.
http://www.kulturekritic.com/2012/12/news/glen-ford-cory-booker-is-the-great-black-hope-for-the-rich
-men-of-america/
This is why I believe hero worship of any kind is dangerous – flawed human beings (i.e. each of us) will always disappoint sooner or later. Even someone who is perfectly-tuned to the malleable will of the people will find it difficult to keep up with the ever-changing demands of the fickle public. I wish Cory well but he’s no savior, be it for Black folk, poor folk or any other folk.
The less Cory Booker is like Coleman Young, the better.
Cory Booker plays the saxophone? Oh wait! I’m thinking of Coleman Hawkins.
Carry on.
Coleman had a distinct problem in a distinct era – that fight (suburbs vs. city in a death match) has killed Detroit and the suburbs will soon follow. I don’t think that has much application to Booker. There was a Star Trek episode that fairly accurately described the issue in Metro Detroit. Coleman wasn’t the cause of the strife, but he was an active participant in the strife – to do otherwise would have entailed capitulation and that is not an option when the issue at hand is self-determination. The end result, as we all clearly see, is total destruction, but we all know the Patrick Henry quote…