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.
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.
The problem with politics, is that if you want to do good, you need to stay in power. It’s often a Devil’s bargain.
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?
Or maybe you’re extremely naïve.
If you look at anyone who has actually made a change in the world, they did it by knowing the rules and knowing how to play the game.
Getting mad at calling Mamdani a smart politician is like getting mad at MLK for choosing Rosa Parks for the bus boycott symbol instead of the first woman who refused to give up her seat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin
He didn’t say “smart politician.” He said “political operator” which has a distinctly more negative connotation.
Now you’re just splitting hairs.
Well fuck me for understanding language, I guess!
Removed by mod
Since when does it have a negative connotation?
Since forever. Search for it if you don’t believe me, and count how many negative instances vs. positive instances you find in the results.
I did and the results showed it as just a basic term to describe an occupation in politics.
None of the examples here have it as a pejorative:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/political-operative
Here’s an Atlantic article about political operatives and what they do, nothing negative about the term per se:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/the-life-of-a-political-operative-explained/253130/
Here’s a blurb on Georgetown’s site referring to a political operative as a regular job stream in politics:
https://politics.georgetown.edu/get-involved2/advance-team/
Here’s a guy who’s calling himself a political operative just fine:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2t2sxk/iama_political_operative_ama/
So where did you get the idea that being called a political operative is a negative thing?
WTF? Since when are these not negative?
Are you going to argue that “no-holds-barred” – as in, fighting dirty – isn’t negative?
Are you going to argue that the system providing little control and no remedy isn’t a bad thing?
The other three examples are too out-of-context to know if they were complimentary or derogatory.
The article is mostly paywalled, but here’s a salient sentence from the first paragraph where it admits I’m right:
The other two things you cited are from self-described “political operatives” themselves, and of course nobody believes themself to be the villain!
No, I’m going to argue that “no-holds-barred” is not “political operative” and that adjectives modify nouns. If you see the phrase “evil dog”, are you going to assume that must mean all dogs are evil?
I’d also argue that you’re wrong about what “no-holds-barred” means too. After all, this is actually from an article championing the person in question. You misread a compliment for an insult because you’re operating on the preconceived notion that both “no-holds-barred” and “political operative” are negative terms when neither are.
No, I’m going to argue that this question has nothing to do with showing that “political operative” is a pejorative term.
That didn’t stop you from trying to argue about these two above, when you believed that arguing about them out of context was in your favour. The other examples are just more inconvenient to try to twist into somehow showing “political operative” is a pejorative. And, as we’ve seen, context is not friendly to your assumption.
How do you go from “it’s wishful thinking to believe the public imagines political operatives and staffers to be like The West Wing” to “political operative is an insulting way to refer to political staffers or politicians”? This isn’t even getting into how the term is clearly and explicitly used in the headline in a way that indicates it as a neutral term that just describes a job, and that it will be used that way throughout the article.
People aren’t going to refer to their jobs in a pejorative way either. Did you forget that you were trying to say calling someone a “smart politician” is better than calling someone a “political operative”? You weren’t saying all politicians are bad so nobody would ever admit they were one.
Again, where are you getting the idea that “political operator” is a term with a negative connotation?
No-holds-barred is about the rules of engagement, not an individual’s fighting technique. If anything it’s even more positive because it means they can hold their own against people who do fight dirty.
It’s only that way because it’s the police chief who crossed the line. That’s a specific instance of the combination of “police chief” and “political operative” where the system provides little control and no remedy.
You might as well say “lawyer” is negative because people have bleak impressions of them. Should those on our side avoid studying law because people will think negatively of them? No, obviously, studying law is crucial to the drafting of policy that benefits people.
Likewise, understanding politics and being effective at operating in the political sphere is crucial to actually making things better.
Your argument is bad and you should feel bad. We want skilled political operatives on our side. If you want to whisper your political dreams into a shoebox and make an inoffensive manifestation board, then bug off and do that. The rest of us actually want to accomplish something, and that requires political savvy.
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!