By Miss Kubelik
John Fetterman, Democratic candidate for Republican Pat Toomey's Pennsylvania Senate seat, is running a great campaign. He has brilliantly defined his GOP opponent, "Dr." Mehmet Oz, as an elitist, carpetbagging New Jerseyite (he calls the Garden State "the land of Oz"). He posts regular (and effective) videos of ordinary Republican voters endorsing him, and just launched a searing ad about Oz's puppy experiments. The dude is not a shy violet.
Fetterman also recently suffered a stroke, but he's in recovery and back on the campaign trail. Republicans (and an NBC reporter we'd never heard of until now) have tried to make an issue out of this. The reporter focused her entire segment last night on Fetterman's request for closed captioning so he could read her questions as well as hear them — a technology very familiar to those in rehab from minor strokes.
Outraged journalists from Kara Swisher to Molly Jong-Fast to Connie Schultz pushed back — especially Swisher, who suffered the same kind of stroke as Fetterman's and who also used closed-captioning during her recovery (today, she's going strong, writing for Vox and New York and hosting a podcast). Other journos have scorched NBC for their framing.
Meanwhile, Oz and the Republicans must be sharpening their knives, ready to go in for the kill. But if they thought John Fetterman would be like John Kerry and not respond (see "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," 2004), they bet wrong. Fetterman has been fierce. "Recovering from a stroke in public isn't easy," he said. "But in January, I’m going to be much better — and Dr. Oz will still be a fraud." Their upcoming debate should be fun! We cats PURR.
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