{"id":956,"date":"2007-06-21T04:05:47","date_gmt":"2007-06-21T10:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/06\/21\/dirty-laundry\/"},"modified":"2007-06-20T13:06:19","modified_gmt":"2007-06-20T19:06:19","slug":"dirty-laundry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=956","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Laundry"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve noted in many <\/em>other places at many <\/em>other times, I have the absolute highest regard for Michael Brodkorb.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, the other day, I took mild exception to the fact that Michael posted<\/a> former Senator and possible future\u00a0Ventura<\/strike> “Independence” Party candidate Dean Barkley’s Match.com ad.\u00a0 My philosophy; keep others’ personal lives out of things<\/em>.\u00a0 Partly because it’s the right thing to do.\u00a0 Partly because as one sows, one tends to reap.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andy Aplikowski<\/a> and Jeff Kouba<\/a> agreed.\u00a0 Jeff’s TvM blogmate\u00a0Gary Miller doesn’t<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And when Gary disagrees, it’s worth a look:<\/p>\n

Like Justice Scalia writing for the minority, let me\u00a0inject some reality to the situation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Politics is a full-contact sport.\u00a0 The other\u00a0team plays to win<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Would the Left exercise similar restraint if the roles were reversed?\u00a0 You already know the answer<\/font><\/a>\u00a0[Gary writes, linking to the “Dump Bachmann” blog, which has lowered local political yellow journalism to a level even Jeff Fecke can look down upon with both relief and disdain].\u00a0 To not use your opponent\u2019s words against them is the political equivalent of unilateral disarmament.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are two Mitches who”ll respond to this, of course; High Road Mitch, and Pragmatic Path Mitch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

High Road Mitch<\/em>:\u00a0 I’d like to think that I – we – are better than the type of moral and ethical fruit flies that put out goo like the Dumb Bachmann<\/a> blog. I certainly aspire to aim higher in life, morally and practically, than Ken “Look!\u00a0 Bachmann in a Nazi Uniform” Avidor (as low a set of expectations as that <\/em>sets).\u00a0 Ones’ moral code is best set to one’s ideals, not one’s detractors’ level.<\/p>\n

Pragmatic Path Mitch<\/em>:\u00a0Sure, politics is hardball. And as more and more people and pundits keep peeling away more and more layers of whatever “privacy” people used to have, it drives away more and more good people from ever even thinking <\/em>about getting involved in politics.<\/p>\n

I’m certainly one of them.\u00a0 I think I’d be a perfectly fine elected representative at some level or another, if I were to move to a more GOP-friendly part of the Metro.\u00a0 But there’s not a chance in hell<\/em> that I’d do it, because…<\/p>\n

…well, we’ll get back to that.<\/p>\n

Minnesota\u2019s 6th is as culturally conservative a district as you will find in these here parts.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pragmatic Path Mitch responds<\/em>:\u00a0 But that majority – who put Michele Bachmann, the\u00a0 most conservative candidate in the state in a year where Republicans dropped like Air America programs – has never been in the faintest danger of electing Barkley, a guy who’s never won <\/em>a a significant office in his life (if you leave out his proxy win via Ventura, his Potemkin candidate) to anything, <\/em>much less the Bachmann seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Folks can discern a great deal about a person\u2019s worldview predicated on how they act when no one is looking.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

High Road\u00a0Mitch\u00a0responds<\/em>:\u00a0Discern…what?\u00a0\u00a0That someone’s a divorced guy who’d like to meet someone who (as he writes in a forum that he can’t imagine someone is going to make into a public spectacle) likes some of the same things he does in private<\/em>?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A professed affinity (in a public forum<\/font><\/a>)\u00a0for \u201cskinny dipping\u201d and \u201cerotica\u201d is a disqualifier for many people who govern their lives by a different set of values \u2014 a majority of whom comprise the electorate in the 6th.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pragmatic Path Mitch responds<\/em>:\u00a0 I doubt that anyone who signs up for Match.com actually knows it’s a public forum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0And even so – what’s this?\u00a0“No, um, “S\u00a0 E\u00a0 X”, please, we’re from the northern ‘burbs<\/em>“.\u00a0 Criminy, if the guy likes skinnydipping with his signifcant other and reading the occasional Maxim Magazine, as long as he’s not inviting anyone’s kids along to watch or read along, what difference does it make?<\/p>\n

Which is a better reason to eschew a Dean Barkley candidacy:\u00a0“he likes to snog around in the local lagoon with his sig.other and watch a little Cinemax”, or “He’s a tax whore.\u00a0 Worse, he’s a stealth <\/em>tax whore”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For that matter, what if someone with impeccable conservative credentials came along, who happened to like a little, er, zing and\u00a0zip in his or her private life?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Where do <\/em>these people think tomorrow’s conservative voters come from, anyway?<\/p>\n

I will confess, however, to\u00a0feeling\u00a0dirty\u00a0finding out\u00a0that a fmr. U.S. Senator and trained lawyer can only muster 75-100K\/year.\u00a0 Now there\u2019s<\/em> your disqualifier.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weirdest part of the whole thing?\u00a0 He used his Senate head shot for his Match profile.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve noted in many other places at many other times, I have the absolute highest regard for Michael Brodkorb.\u00a0 Now, the other day, I took mild exception to the fact that Michael posted former Senator and possible future\u00a0Ventura “Independence” Party candidate Dean Barkley’s Match.com ad.\u00a0 My philosophy; keep others’ personal lives out of things.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-campaign-08"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}