The New Jersey correspondents’ dinner and roast that made headlines this week when Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) delivered a joking, profanity-laden speech, also reportedly included a skit with gay jokes about Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
The skit was criticized in a column Friday by Alfred Doblin, the editorial page editor of The Bergen Record.
Doblin noted that Christie’s remarks at the Wednesday dinner held by the New Jersey Legislative Correspondents’ Club in Hamilton, N.J. caught the most attention, but that he found something more troubling.
Less noted was a skit based on “Village People” music, a part of which focused on U.S. Sen. Cory Booker’s sexual orientation. Back when Booker ran for Senate against Republican Steve Lonegan, this began a minor campaign issue about whether a man who admitted the guilty pleasure of a pedicure was a real man — even if that same man, Booker, rushed into a burning building to save a female neighbor.
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Booker has constantly denied rumors that he may be gay. Whether he is straight or gay has nothing to do with whether he is a good or poor public servant.
If making gay jokes about Booker is the best you can do about a U.S. senator who tweets more than James Franco and Justin Bieber combined, and who extols the joys of being vegan in every other tweet, you shouldn’t be writing for a living, you should go find a Fotomat and wait for a return to 1975 and a rush on Kodachrome film.
Even Christie criticized the skit during his remarks on Wednesday night, sarcastically telling the group of journalists that it should be proud of the skit.
“Tonight a song on Cory Booker being gay, all of you have really reached a new high,” Christie said, according to audio posted online Friday by the International Business Times. “Pat yourselves, give yourselves a round of applause. That was really great. That part I’m serious about. You know, there’s some things like, you know, that abuse of me tonight is just fine but that was really interesting. A brand new high for you guys. Congratulate yourselves.”
Booker, who is unmarried, previously dealt with rumors about being gay by saying, “So what does it matter if I am?”
Outreach!
Not really a repremand of the aspersions … perhaps ‘new low’ would have been more apt. Can’t tell who Christie hates more … the media or the popular Cory Booker.
He probably hates the prospect of what Booker’s future holds.
This skit was apparently organized and performed by NJ journalists. How far the fourth estate has fallen in this country indeed.
Who cares! What mindless partisan “entertainment”!
The idiotic parade of “information” about the crazy right’s most recent idiocy IS NOT INFORMATION OR NEWS!
It seems media across the board are intent upon keeping us ignorant of the most important events of the day.
Oh, in case anybody is in the fast track trade passage in the Senate today (virtually guaranteed to impose TPP and its corporate plutocracy onto the near future), this is a list of the corporate shills and sellouts responsible:
Senators: Maria Cantwell (Washington), Tom Carper (Delaware), Chris Coons (Delaware), Dianne Feinstein (California), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Mark Warner, Michael Bennet (Colorado), Tim Kaine (Va), Patty Murray (Wash), Bill Nelson (Fla), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), and Ron Wyden (Oregon) - Wyden’s the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.
At least Krugman is still paying attention.