BlizzCon

It's snowed hard back East and it's making a couple of careers, tarnishing a few others.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in NYC didn't seem prepared, and there's some accusations of budget cuts having left the city that way. Thank God for Twitter, relief for people stuck on tarmacs.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, not only did battlin' Gov. Chris Christie spend his blizzard in Florida with Mickey Mouse, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno took vacation in Mexico at the same time and didn't bother returning. Useless, I guess.

It's been all to the benefit of NJ State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat acting as Governor by law in lieu of the two Republicans. He's handled himself well and it may give him more power against Christie in the new year.

But the best PR has been self-generated by Newark Mayor Cory Booker who used Twitter with great effectiveness to help target snow relief in his town. Per Sean Gregory at Time:

Booker's frantic Twitter feed reads like an action novel. "I have a snowpocalypse crush on @CoryBooker," wrote one of Booker's million-plus followers. "He's like a superhero with a shovel." The mayor was out clearing snow until 3 a.m. on Dec. 28 before heading back out three hours later after a few winks. "This is one of those times you're just pushing," Booker told TIME while riding around Newark early Tuesday evening, anxiously awaiting a Twitter response from a Newark resident who said her 82-year-old grandmother was shut in by snow. A few minutes earlier, Booker, who played football at Stanford, helped dig out a New Jersey transit bus. "It's an endurance test." This is not the first time Booker has responded to distressed citizens on Twitter. He shoveled the driveway of an elderly man last New Year's Eve after the man's daughter tweeted about his predicament. He also hit the streets during snowstorms last February.

Check out his Twitter stream here.

Yes, social media is the hero once again. Tweet-tweet!