This election year has been full of odd little funny things. It’s like a buffet loaded with wilted salads and overcooked chicken — but down near the end of the table they’ve laid out some tiny, tasty desserts.
One of these delicious offerings was the response of someone named Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic nominee for Senate from Kentucky, when she was asked, in an editorial conference at the Louisville Courier-Journal, whether she had voted for the much-detested-in-Kentucky Barack Obama. Over and over, she refused to provide an answer, blathering instead about what the election is really about, slamming her opponent, and saying that she “respect[s] the sanctity of the ballot box” (an odd way of indicating that although you want to go to the Senate and vote all the time, you won’t say how you voted for president). In this case, the hardcore partisan decided (and it was a decision, because her response was immediate and well-rehearsed) that hiding from her own party allegiance was worth the price of looking like a clown. Either that, or she’s so stupid she didn’t realize that she’d look like a clown. Anyway, it was a hilarious performance.
A few days before, Republican activists had secretly recorded conversations with activists in the Grimes campaign, including a major donor. They then shared these conversations with the national audience — chiefly comments about how Grimes was lying all the time about her support for the state’s leading industry, coal. Her reason? Otherwise, you dope, she would never get elected!
Who can withstand the force of arguments like that? Who can resist the comedy of people working in a moralistic cause while espousing a philosophy of amoralism?
Even funnier was an editorial statement that appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal, in which the paper’s politics writer explains why it wouldn’t publish anything about the Republicans’ conversational adventures. You can read the statement for yourself and assess the reasons. But the first thing you’ll notice is that in explaining why the paper won’t run the story, the writer goes ahead and recites the whole thing!
As the waiters say: here’s your dessert — enjoy!
