The media attacks Mayor Cory Booker for tweets to a stripper, is 12 years old

Apparently, it’s a big scandal to DM with a stripper! Or at least you would think so if you opened up The New York Times today which reported last night that New Jersey Senate hopeful Mayor Cory Booker once sent a flirtatious message to a stripper!

Upon hearing the news that a single 44-year-old Mayor once DM’d friendly, complimentary messages to another person, I’m like:

But seriously, this is so stupid. The grand total of two messages were basic flirting between Mayor Booker and Lynsie Lee, but since everyone who writes about politics is 12 years old, they must create a spectacle and cover the story as if it’s not a nothingburger.

Via The New York Times:

In a message to the stripper, named Lynsie Lee, Mr. Booker wrote that “the East Coast loves you, and by the East Coast, I mean me.”

Ms. Lee, whose photograph on Twitter features her splayed topless across a yellow couch, replied, “Well, now I’m blushing :)”

Mr. Booker wrote back: “It’s only fair.”

There is plenty else for the media to cover–they don’t have to embarrass themselves and pretend like a single guy flirting with a girl is news. Lee messaged Mayor Booker first and he was simply responding. There is no there, there.

Mayor Booker follows over 70,000 people on twitter. Mayor Booker follows me on twitter. I’ve DM’d with Cory Booker. More than once. I went to law school in Newark, New Jersey, and so I’ve DM’d him about stop lights being out, ice being on the sidewalk in front of my parent’s church, and even after we first met doing a neighborhood night patrol in 2009.

He always responds. He’s one of the few politicians who tweets himself, for the most part, and hasn’t delegated all of his social media interactions to a staffer. He uses twitter as a tool to connect with people and to do his work as mayor. That’s a really important development for politics, and it’s a shame the media is so quick to jump on some flirting to make a big deal out of nothing. That might change the way Mayor Booker tweets from here on out. And that’s a damn shame.