New York City has released more than 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed records about air quality following the September 11, 2001, attacks, showing city officials at the time knew conditions around Ground Zero were unsafe to breathe despite repeated assurances to the public.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the release at a news conference Tuesday.
“As the years pass and the human toll grows, we reckon with the cost of September 11th whenever another New Yorker is stolen from us too soon,” Mamdani said. “Now, close to 25 years later, more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day itself.”
At least 140,000 people from all 50 states have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, and 49,000 have been diagnosed with certified WTC-related cancers, according to the 9/11 Memorial. Mamdani said Tuesday that more people are eligible for assistance than are currently enrolled, including residents who lived near the site but have not received outreach and those who live outside of New York.
This guy is such a pro political operator… In one action of exposing this lie he increases the trust in his gov, his own trustworthiness and he puts a lot of fuel in the Medicare-for-All fight which his comrades are fighting in his state and around the country.
That is such an incredibly cynical way of spinning it, even if it was meant to be a compliment.
Edit: Folks, “political operator” is what you call people who are particularly manipulative, conniving, and in it only for themselves. People who “operate” the political machine, with all the bribery, corruption, retaliation, and other dirty tricks that implies. I don’t care what the ignorant replies say; it is not a good thing!
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Mamdani is a relatively left-wing Muslim and non-white politician in America. It’s not cynical to say that he needs to be a smooth political operator, because if he isn’t he won’t survive.
And if he does fail, he’ll be replaced with a candidate who is almost certainly worse, and leave left-wing politics and colleagues in a worse position.
It’s not fair that the president is a rapist, while Mamdani can’t make even the slightest misstep (or something that can be portrayed as such), but that’s American politics. The deck is stacked.
Yeah, this is quite the opposite to cynical. Progressives cannot deliver material good for people unless they gain and maintain power.
It is always cynical to describe someone as a “political operator,” because that phrase is inherently negative. It describes someone who is manipulative in a selfishly power-seeking way.
Being good at politics is not the same thing as being a “political operator.” I totally agree Mamdani is the former, but I vehemently disagree that this act is evidence of the latter!
Not necessarily:
It describes how you achieve your aims, not necessarily what your aims are. Of course, given this is politics we’re talking about, it’s understandable you took it to be necessarily negative.
A “smooth operator” isn’t the same thing as a “political operator” either. The original commenter didn’t say “smooth;” you added that yourself.
You’re right about the smooth bit. Don’t know how that happened.
In any case, operator isn’t necessarily negative, neither is political operator. It can be and often is, but not necessarily. I often see it being used as a compliment.
I did a google, here’s an example from NPR, which is clearly complimentary:
https://www.nhpr.org/politics/2012-05-10/obama-heads-to-hollywood-conservative-group-mocks-celebrity-president
It usually is, as in, more often than not.
Pretty much the only times I see it used as a compliment are from political wonks (e.g. the article you cited) or other politicians… in other words, people so deep in it they don’t understand how much contempt normal people have for politicians, on average. To a normal person, “political operator” (not just “operator;” “political operator” specifically) is negative.
The comment above which started this discussion was complementary, and you admitted as much in your reply to it.
Others have also said and provided examples of the phrase sometimes being complementary.
You yourself moved from saying:
To:
Ie. sometimes it is positive.
You were wrong about a phrase sometimes having a different connotation, it happens, who gives a shit?
Yeah, better words could have been chosen for sure 😄
He IS really good at his two jobs (governing to benefit the people and winning over hearts and minds), though, which is fucking GREAT!
Usually only far right ghouls, ideology-challenged “centrists” and other people on the wrong side of history are extremely skilled at the strategic parts.
It’s fucking great to have a politician with progressive goals and policies who’s not just skilled enough to avoid the duopoly propaganda machine burying him (which is already better than 99% of progressive politicians), but actually succeeds in dominating the narrative himself WITHOUT having to stoop to their level by feeding the people lies and convenient omissions of important information!