That is the message of Vlad Chituc’s hagiographic piece currently up at the Daily Beast, which chronicles the moral valor of New Jersey’s senator-elect, a vegetarian for two decades, in his decision to go full-on vegan until the end of the calendar year (announced via Twitter last weekend). I have no opinion about the former Newark mayor’s diet (though my opinion of veganism tends toward the Ron Swanson-esque), but in reaction to the choice tidbits interspersed throughout Chituc’s piece one would need a titanium constitution not to retch. An amuse-bouche:
There’s a storybook trajectory to Booker’s mythos, and it practically embodies Americana: from Stanford college football to a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford; from Yale Law School to the city council in Newark; from Newark’s mayor’s office to the U.S. Senate. Each step of the way, Booker has thrived on the philosophy that your actions matter more than what you preach. . . .
Booker is trying to do a better job of living out the principles he already has. There’s an almost Christ-like quality at play: living in a mobile home on one of Newark’s worst drug corners and tweeting with a stripper are only a few steps removed from washing the feet of the poor and accepting perfume from a prostitute.
“A few steps removed”? If by that you mean enormous, bestriding-the-world steps. Because the Gospel According to Cory would likely feature some non-canonical stories — such as that time Jesus took a selfie with each of his disciples. Or when the Son of Man snuck out in the middle of the night to get a mani-pedi.
Given all of this, Booker isn’t interested in preaching. “There’s too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values. And that’s what I’m trying to do,” he told me.
Shout, Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of T-Bone!