【politics】The Charles E. Schumer Award
for Dominating the New York Media Market by Any Means Necessary
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/thirsties-awards-congress-10-biggest-attention-seekers/

THE MEDIA ISSUE

The Award for Thirstiest Member of Congress
Goes to …
Presenting the first-ever Thirsties, for those who excel in Washington’s signature art form: trying to get on your TV screen tonight.

BY POLITICO MAGAZINE STAFF | ILLUSTRATIONS BY NATALIA AGATTE FOR POLITICO | LAST UPDATED: APRIL 27, 2023, 11:27 P.M. GMT+2

Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Washington hasn’t had its own awards — until now.

Introducing the Thirsties, a celebration of the quality that defines this place.

You know what we’re talking about: the thirst. That unquenchable drive for publicity, attention, buzz. Call it what you want, This Town is full of it. The thirst can be found in staffers, lobbyists — even journalists, who are supposed to be covering the story, not angling for a starring role in it. To paraphrase a hoary old Washington line on something almost as obscene: You know thirst when you see it.

But nowhere is the thirst more unslakable than among the 535 members of Congress, who every day lunge for the microphone, news camera or tweet button to find a way — any way — to insert themselves into a news cycle — any news cycle — and make it all about them. Even in this crowd, though, a few stand out for going above and beyond.


We gathered the names very unscientifically, mostly via our compilation of look-who’s-at-it-again text exchanges over the years. So, on this holy weekend for official Washington, why not honor them? (We depend on them to do this job, after all.) Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado: the inaugural round of the Thirsties.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, who retweets his own tweets with admirable ferocity, relentlessly sought to leverage the Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) affair to draw attention to himself (including showing up at Santos’ office with fellow junior New York Democrat Daniel Goldman, clutching a copy of the ethics complaint the pair had filed stagily displayed for the cameras to catch) and has sought to use Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) ubiquity to position himself to more moderate and conservative media as the other, more sensible young New York liberal.

贴主:Haisen2023于2023_04_28 7:03:01编辑