Reply #19: Have you read this by Al Giordano? [View All]

[Cha]

He's had a lot to say about Caroline and it's all good..this is just one of his pieces.


"See this photograph? It's of New York political leader Basil Paterson and his family, who has been: State Senator, Deputy Mayor, candidate for Lieutenant Governor and the first African-American Secretary of State in New York. He's a living legend in New York politics.

And see the kid with the afro on your right? That's his son, David Paterson, now Governor of New York, who will fill a US Senate vacancy in January.

Some folks seem to be forgetting that this will be a "primary-of-one." The state Constitution instructs that the Governor appoint to fill any empty US Senate seat until the next regularly scheduled election.

David Paterson has had to suffer the slings and arrows and jealousies of those who said he would never have risen through the ranks of Big Apple politics (first as an Assistant District Attorney in Queens, then on the staff of Manhattan Borough President - and close friend of his dad - David Dinkins, then filling his father's old State Senate seat, then tapped as Eliot Spitzer's running mate and finally filling his vacancy to become governor) if not for the family name and his legendary father's influence.

Of course, Governor Paterson knows the truth about himself, and is well familiar with the sniping of those who say he didn't deserve to rise (or wouldn't have risen if his name hadn't been "Paterson").

My guess is that every time he reads and hears some pundit or blogger or politician railing against an appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the Senate based on her name and family and the suggestion that she's not qualified, calling her a nail-filing princess and comparing her to Sarah Palin and all the other cheap shots taken in the past week, an enormous well of empathy and commonality is stirred.

Ha ha. They fell for it, hook, line and sinker, while forgetting the rules of this process: that only one person gets to decide.

They broke a cardinal rule of community organizing: they should have studied the target audience first.

There may be other arguments that could work on Paterson to pick someone else, but they've been drowned out by the shrill and unfair critiques that he's long heard against him now applied just as spitefully to Caroline Kennedy!"

"Checkmate."


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