Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter blames Blackberry instead of billionaire for NY Senate coup

I finally understood this week that my wife was right–that the Blackberry is the tool of Satan. It is Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. The way I came to understand this was itself a sign of the sickness that this instrument brings.

Please ponder the case of one Malcolm Smith, who until a few days ago was the majority leader of the New York State Senate. Smith received a visit from a New York billionaire named Tom Golisano, who has spent a good chunk of his fortune in recent years running quixotic campaigns for governor, bankrolling some of Bill Clinton’s activities and otherwise trying to let the world know that a man named Tom Golisano once strode the earth. He had bankrolled Smith and other Democrats to help them take control of the state senate in January for the first time in 43 years.

via Jonathan Alter: The Blackberry: Destroyer of Worlds — And the New York Senate.

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter argues that it was Malcolm Smith’s incessant typing on his Blackberry — and not Tom Golisano’s decision to pursade two Democrats to throw their support behind Republicans — that caused the recent New York Senate coup.

It should be fairly easy to see why this argument is silly and wrong. Golisano has been pissed at the New York Senate ever since they passed a watered-down version of the so-called Millionaire’s Tax. Golisano was so distressed that he would have to pay an extra 2% in taxes, he fled New York and took refuge in his $13 million waterfront mansion in Naples, Florida where he plotted against the Democrats who had betrayed him.

So when Golisano met with Smith, he wasn’t annoyed at Smith’s typing on his Blackberry. He was annoyed that Smith wasn’t obeying his orders to nix the Millionaire’s Tax that the Working Families Party had been fighting to include in the budget as an alternative to measures that would have hurt working people as proposed by Governor Paterson.

Golisano left the meeting feeling Smith wasn’t going to play ball, and so he threw his support behind one of the most corrupt men in New York and a homophobic politician — both Democrats — with the caveat that they switch their support to the Republican Party. Pedro Espada has, in Alter’s words, been “fined for flagrant campaign spending abuses,” and Hiram Monserrate so values the sanctity of love between one man and one woman that he once slashed his girlfriend in the face with a broken glass. Somehow, Golisano convinced these two morally upright men to switch political allegiances.

The real story here has nothing to do with Smith’s Crackberry and everything to do with the fact that one billionaire essentially bought the state Senate majority and successfully subverted the democratic will of New Yorkers.