I think Cory Booker is a pretty cool guy, and I think it's great--though expected--that he won this election. He has the potential to be a senator akin to some of my favorites (Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Bernie Sanders), so I have relatively high hopes. It's also nice that this caps a day when Congress' self-inflicted dual crises have come to a somewhat satisfying end. A good day for America!
[Excerpt]
Cory Booker wins U.S. Senate election in N.J.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker won a special election Wednesday to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, giving the rising Democratic star a bigger political stage after a race against conservative Steve Lonegan, a former small-town mayor. . .
I had a little trouble with the headline here. Basically, there was a kerfuffle on Meet the Press, where Obama "surrogate" and Newark NJ Mayor Cory Booker criticized President Obama's use of Bain Capital's history on Mitt Romney. Even that sentence is a bit tangled, sorry. Anyway, the President did a pretty good job justifying himself today. Romney's entire schtick seems to be as a "job creator"* at Bain Capital. It has to be fair game, whatever Booker or Romney has to say about it, because Romney has hung his hat on it. Anyway, here's the Prez:
*By the way, whenever I hear a pundit or politician use the term "job creator" (and many, many other terms), I cringe. Because I know--unless they're using it ironically with air quotes--they're a bullshit artist. They're using Frank Luntz's Words that Work, and they have contempt for their audience, hoping to snow them. Unfortunately, they're so repetitive, that it bleeds over into common usage. I hate Frank Luntz, or at least what he does, and what he's done.
Mayor of Newark managed to step in it pretty big on Meet the Press on Sunday (in a discussion in an episode I watched, and didn't manage to notice). Cory Booker's problem--besides going against President Obama's message when he is an Obama surrogate--was a classic on: false equivalence. It's one of the most infuriating issues in politics and in modern news-info-tainment. "They all do it." "They're just alike." "Both sides of the aisle are guilty."
Mama might have told you that there are two sides to every story, but she should have been more precise. Both sides are not always equal. Rachel Maddow is not merely the flip side of Sean Hannity. Creationism isn't as scientifically valid as Evolution. And the Jeremiah Wright "issue" is not the equivalent to Mitt Romney's history at Bain Capital.
[Excerpt]
Et Tu, Cory Booker? The Pathology of False Equivalence
There is a disease spreading across our political punditry, and the beloved mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, seems to have contracted it. On Sunday’s Meet The Press, Booker disavowed the new ad campaign attacking Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, and in doing so, compared the Obama team’s decision to air the ads to the right-wing invocation of Reverend Wright to take down the president. Booker released a retraction video hours later, but the incident indicates just how advanced the sickness of false equivalence is in our national dialogue. The plague has now infected a normally sharp public official unlikely to confuse a thinly veiled racist play against the first African-American president with an examination of the economic track record of his challenger. . .
