Gaffes made by Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman after his stroke
Gaffes made by Pennsylvania Senate Candidate John Fetterman after his stroke in June
New York Magazine dismissed media concerns about Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman's health in a glossy profile piece that argued the Democratic Senate candidate's "vulnerability" was actually a strength.
Fetterman has faced scrutiny about his fitness for office after he suffered a stroke last May and has had several verbal stumbles on the campaign trail. He has agreed to only one debate with his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, on Oct. 25, where he will use a closed-captioning system to help with his auditory processing issues related to the stroke.
However, NY Mag's Rebecca Traister took aim at other liberal media outlets who dared to raise similar concerns.
"The willingness with which the political press took up the frame offered by the Oz campaign has been startling, including the Washington Post’s editorial board proclaiming that 'lingering, unanswered questions about his health' were ‘unsettling,’" she wrote.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, accompanied by Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Pa., speaks in Philadelphia, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Ryan Collerd) (The Associated Press)
Traister argued there had been "ample coverage" of Fetterman's multiple health conditions and that his ability to speak wasn't a "mystery." She also cited his campaign revealing Fetterman had taken two neurocognitive tests with normal results.
She complained media critics were unfairly hounding him.
"Yet legitimate newspapers are pushing for further documentation with some of the energy once applied to Hillary’s emails, while the right-wing carnival barkers treat complete medical records as they did Obama’s birth certificate," she wailed.
The writer said she sat down with the Democrat for a 50-minute interview in which she said he used closed-captioning in order to quickly process what she said. Fetterman has only done four nationally televised interviews since his stroke in May, all on MSNBC.
Mehmet Oz, US Republican Senate candidate for Pennsylvania, speaks during a community discussion on safer streets in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, US, on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. Photographer: Nate Smallwood/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Photographer: Nate Smallwood/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Traister, however, defended the Democrat's record.
"In the final weeks, Fetterman is banking on the hope that voters will see in his vulnerability a new way to appreciate his strength," she wrote.
The lengthy profile of Fetterman also touted the Democratic candidate for being a White male who "defied right-wing" stereotypes.
"He was a Democrat who defied the right-wing caricatures of the contemporary left as elite, effete, and out of touch because he was self-evidently none of those things," she wrote.
"Political reporters were gobsmacked; they’d never seen anyone like him before. Sure, on some level, he was exactly the same as every other senator in Pennsylvania history, a White man. But he wore shorts in January!" the writer added.
John Fetterman, lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic senate candidate, speaks during a campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. Photographer: Nate Smallwood/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Photographer: Nate Smallwood/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The liberal journalist even compared Fetterman to former President Trump in his appeal to blue collar White Democrats, saying he was the "unicorn" the Democratic Party needed.
"He was perhaps what they needed: the unicorn who could persuasively pitch policies that would make voters’ lives materially better while conveying in every word and gesture that he was one of them," Traister claimed.
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