How Cory Booker Can Make Himself Seem Straight

Advice for an aspiring politician

Forty-something and single, Cory Booker famously lived in the projects in Newark, New Jersey, where single women are abundant, for something ridonkulous like eight years. What was he doing all that time, flogging the bishop?

Currently the mayor of Newark, Booker is running for the Senate in the upcoming election. I can’t imagine his relationship status will be much of an issue one way or the other. I’ve never heard of the guy he’s running against. This is Barack Obama running against Alan Keyes all over again, except I guess the Republicans couldn’t find a token black guy to run. I’m not sure if I’m old enough to run for the Senate, and I don’t live in New Jersey anyway—though running for the Senate is one of the things I’m considering for if and when my five year plan to become a professional author of reasonably-priced ebooks about rap music doesn’t work out.

Once you’re in office, who gives a shit whether or not you’re in a relationship? It’s easy to keep getting reelected, and even if you can’t you can get a job as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry or a weapons manufacturer making a shedload of money. It’s the definition of a no-lose situation. The only way you can get kicked out is if you get caught up in some sort of weird sexual incident, and the only way you can get caught up in something like that is if you run afoul of the Illuminati. Elliot Spitzer had to find out the hard way. Cory Booker doesn’t seem like the kind of brother who would bite the hand that feeds. We all saw him on Meet the Press, jumping to the defense of the oh so beleaguered Goldman Sachs.

I shudder to think what he had to do just to get this far. God forbid it should all be for naught.

Seeming gay could be an issue for Cory Booker, if he ever wants to run for president. Whereas it’s assumed that sexual deviancy is rampant in Congress (not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, mind you), ‘Merica only wants straight guys as Commander in Chief. They want a guy with a wife, and they want to be reasonably certain that he’s either making sweet, passionate love to her on the reg or stepping out on her on the reg. That’s why America loves Bill Clinton. There was no question as to whether or not he was straight. If you didn’t know anything about him and you just saw him, you’d have to assume he just got done having sex. His face is always kinda flush.

Al Gore seemed relatively effete, and it may have cost him in the 2000 election. He would lisp just the slightest bit while discussing the Social Security “lock box.” That’s why his advisers had him pose for the cover of Rolling Stone with a cucumber down his pants, like Harry Shearer in Spinal Tap, and then grab his wife’s ass and try to shove his tongue down her throat at a campaign event. George W. Bush, 5'9 with his shoes on and a former male cheerleader, wasn’t exactly the picture of masculinity either, but at least he didn’t seem very smart. You got the sense that, more so than anything else, he just wanted a drink—more than any woman you could offer him. Rich his entire life, he never even left the US until he was like 55. Think of how much damage he could have done down in the Philippines.

As the first black presidential candidate who was clean and articulate, Barack Obama benefited from his blackness, at least to the extent that he was capable of summoning it. He wasn’t exactly Wilt Chamberlain, but compared to John McCain he might as well have been. In a debate in which the two of them were allowed to walk around on stage, for some reason, the president came across as a lot more youthful and virile—and you got the sense that he would have even if the two of them were the same age. Black don’t crack. McCain, meanwhile, aimlessly wandered the stage as if he might be feeling the effects of Alzheimer’s. How’s he supposed to satisfy his wife, if he doesn’t even know where he is? No wonder she’s hopped up on prescription meds.

Cory Booker doesn’t have a wife to speak of, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to rectify that situation once he’s in the Senate, in a few months. That’s what I’d recommend for him, anyway. Sudden as that might seem, Dennis Kucinich married a random (extremely hot) chick from his campaign staff during the ‘04 election. As if. There isn’t even another presidential election until 2016. He’s not in the Newark projects anymore, so he doesn’t have to sweat bringing a girl back home after dark and running the risk of having to hand her over to the wolves in exchange for his own safety. He can get a room in a fancy hotel like the one where Al Gore used to live when he was in high school. Girls love hotel rooms, and I imagine living in one permanently would be roughly equivalent to being in a band, in terms of increasing your appeal to the ladies.