Andy Post at MDE  points us to a tweet yesterday from a DFL staffer for St. Paul DFL Senator Dick Cohen:

Dumb remark by the overly-entitled child of boundless political privilege?  In and of itself, sure.  And, as such, more or less forgettable.

Post, however, wonders if the DFLers will show the same outrage as they did when a GOP Senator’s assistant sent an imprudent – dumb, really – email over the winter.  Kim Kelley, a legislative assistant to Senator Scott Newman, told the Minnesota Nurse’s Association that the Senator would not meet with their rep, since the Nurse’s Association had donated to Newman’s opponent’s campaign.

He linked to “Sally Jo Sorenson” of Bluestem Prairie.  Sorenson, always on the lookout for affronts to DFL integrity, amended a post she wrote last January in which she wrote about the flap in January:

Here’s the intact email, since the Kelley email no longer works:

From: kim.kelley@senate.mn [mailto:kim.kelley@senate.mn]
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 2:00 PM
To: Eileen Gavin
Subject: [Eileen Gavin] Meeting

Hi Eileen-

Unfortunately, Senator Newman will not see any organizations that donated to/supported his opponent Hal Kimball. After some careful checking, I discovered that the MNA had donated to Kimball’s campaign. Your association will be unable to schedule an appointment with Senator Newman.

Kim Kelley

Legislative Assistant

Sorenson rejects the idea that there’s any moral equivalence between a bobbleheaded LA’s caustic, sneering contempt for Christians, and another bobblehead bringing a hint of retributive spite into getting access to a Senator.

And guess what – she’s right!

They are two separate, equally noxious issues.

Kelley let slip the worst-kept secret in politics; donations buy you access, and pissing off politicians loses it.  The Minnesota Nurses Association is no more welcome with Scott Newman than the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance is with, say, Tom Bakk.  Oh, it’s good politics to meet with, and especially to be seen meeting with, ones’ opponents (and Sorensen does note that Newman did actually meet with the MNA after all), but let’s not kid ourselves; there’s a reason special interests pony up for campaigns.  (And the more politicians try to “reform” it, rather than illuminate it, the worse it gets).

Don’t kid yourself; if a young evangelical Republican tweeted a dumb jape about Eid, or Passover, or…well, any non-Christian observance, really, the long knives would certainly come out.  But Kaplan?  Well, she’s what you get from young “progressives” who’ve come up through an academic and political system that teaches smug, giggly, entitled intolerance.  And stop the presses – a  Jewish (presumably – I mean, it’s not a stretch to think Kaplan is at least ethnically Jewish, but given my family name, I’m not insensitive to the possibility it’s not) 20-something hipster is bagging on Christians.

It’s pretty piddly, really.  But so is most petty intolerance.