Author

Jay Bookman

Jay Bookman

Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press. Bookman was also once the editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

COMMENTARY

Unholy night – A Trump White House Christmas coup caper

By: - November 19, 2023

It was a Christmas party at the Trump White House, and despite the festive decorations, the trees and the wreaths and the red-and-green bunting, the mood must have been grim. A few days earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had firmly rejected a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas seeking the overthrow of election results […]

COMMENTARY

Right-wing culture warrior attacks hurt military recruiting

By: - October 6, 2023

By 2017, the U.S. military knew it had a serious problem in the ranks. In a survey of more than 80,000 personnel, one out of four minority service members had reported that they had experienced racial or ethnic harassment by fellow soldiers in the previous year; as a result, roughly a third of those were […]

COMMENTARY

In MTG’s grimy paws, a beautiful video becomes something sickening

By: - April 7, 2023

“I’ll say it again,” Marjorie Taylor Greene says in a new video labeled “The Predator President.” “Democrats are the party of pedophiles.” What follows in the video is a compilation of interactions between Joe Biden and various young people, attempting to make the case that the 80-year-old president sexually abuses young children. This is what […]

COMMENTARY

Voters rejected Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ nonsense in Georgia first, when it mattered most

By: - December 19, 2022

When the history books about Donald Trump are written – and believe me, there will be many – Georgia will have earned a place of pride. It’s only a mild exaggeration to say that Georgia has been to Trump what Waterloo was to Napoleon, what Saratoga was to King George and his redcoats, what Gettysburg […]

COMMENTARY

How much is too much for Herschel Walker’s ‘family-values’ voters?

By: - October 5, 2022

You can tell Herschel Walker was raised right. After all, only a gentleman would think to send a “Get well” card – hand-signed, from #34! — to the girlfriend whose abortion he had just financed. That’s classy, or as close to classy as you’re going to find in this mess. It is not classy to […]

COMMENTARY

Private school vouchers provide students a better chance to excel? Prove it

By: - March 17, 2022

Bit by bit, inch by inch, year by year, Republicans in the Georgia General Assembly and in legislatures across the country have been moving toward passage of full-fledged school-voucher systems that would inevitably undermine public education. This year, at least for the moment, and at least in Georgia, that incremental advance has been stalled. Perhaps […]

COMMENTARY

Guilty verdicts in Arbery killing give no pleasure, only relief

By: - November 25, 2021

There’s no pleasure to be taken from the guilty verdicts returned Wednesday by a Glynn County jury in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery; there is only relief and thanksgiving that in the end justice could be done, at least in a case in which the evidence was so well-documented and seemingly obvious. Given that they […]

COMMENTARY

Stolen 2020 election myth imposes loyalty test on Republicans

By: - October 26, 2021

The narrative about a stolen election is completely fabricated. None of it is true. None of it happened. None of it, not in Arizona, not in Georgia, not anywhere, none of it. All “evidence” offered to support that narrative is likewise a mirage; it vanishes completely upon closer inspection. It’s just a fiction, a fiction […]

COMMENTARY
what who me?

Extremism is the GOP’s new normal

By: - February 16, 2021

It is extremist to claim, in the complete absence of evidence, that the election was stolen. It is extremist to demand that millions of legal, valid ballots be tossed out by the courts, by state legislators, by Congress or the vice president. It is extremist to claim that those who upheld the election, who abided […]

COMMENTARY
montgomery

Arbery case’s true horror is safe harbor given for modern lynching

By: - May 15, 2020

Only in recent years has white American culture become willing to stare the horror of lynching in the face, or at least glance at it sideways. It has done so only because time’s passage has made it feel safe to do so, allowing us to pretend that it was perpetrated by people utterly unlike ourselves. […]

COMMENTARY
y2k in atlanta

Climate crisis doesn’t get the same urgency Y2K did

By: - January 3, 2020

Take a moment to think back to simpler times, to a long-gone era exactly 20 years ago this week, when we celebrated the dawn of a new millennium under the shadow cast by Y2K. Remember all that? Y2K was a universal computer glitch that threatened to shut down power grids, paralyze banking systems and incapacitate […]