Tuesday, November 17th, 2009...10:36 am
Quoted
Sonoran Alliance had a reply to my post on Vic Williams the other day. I particularly enjoyed their citation of David Safier:
It what is best described as a case of wishful thinking, both Tedski over at Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, and David Safier at My Gay Arizona…are playing up the notion that State Representative Vic Williams is gearing up for a primary challenge to State Senator Al Melvin down in LD26.
“My Gay Arizona.” Does David’s wife know?
They take me down for being a member of the “hard left” trying to encourage mischief. The “hard left” allegation made me so angry that I had to put down my copy of The Motorcycle Diaries, rip off my Hugo Chávez pin and miss the latest instalment of Democracy Now! I’m the “Hard Left” now? Puhleeze.
Anyway, their main point is that this is was a “rumor” and “wishful thinking.” I basically conceded such in the post (not so much on the “wishful thinking,” I’d rather not see Williams, who is particularly reptillian even by politician standards, advance up the food chain). Most of the post was just a chance for me to give him a little grief for the way he plays his politics and to throw in a Melvin anecdote. I’m glad they see this as an opportunity to knock the rumor down (I thought it was only plausible because of Williams’s ego), but it is a bit funny to see the SA people go after me for “rumor mongering” when it is what both our sites trade in as political blogs.
A closing bit of advice to Williams: if you want to keep you intentions on the DL, don’t go and tell your colleagues that you want to run against Melvin. Just saying…
5 Comments
November 17th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
About the MyGayArizona reference about my post. Apparently the website has been regularly reposting my Blog for Arizona posts with my name but without mentioning BfA or linking to the blog. It’s possible SA thought that’s where the post originated.
I’m always flattered when someone thinks my posts are worth reposting, but it isn’t right for any site to create the misimpression that someone is posting for them. At the very least, this is a broach of web/blog etiquette. It may be more than that.
So feel free to post excerpts from my posts, folks, but say where they come from and link directly to BfA. That’s where I hang my blogger’s hat.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
My favorite part of the SA post was “(CAUTION: Lots of gay cruise ads on this page)”
Just too randomly funny.
November 18th, 2009 at 12:26 am
We didn’t, when we should have, defend our denomination as “liberals”, and as an itimidated fall back said we’d be called “progressives” instead. Now we’ll bridle at being called “hard left”, and cringe away from a real misnomer. Screw them; suppose we define ourselves, and make a choice. I’m a LaFollette progressive, and a Sam Rayburn/ FDR/ LBJ liberal. Call me a liberal, and let’s claim this dignified description back. Let’s stop apologizing. Or expect to let someone else, with no real idea what the terms actually mean, call us facist socialist mother-humpers.
I’m a liberal.
November 18th, 2009 at 12:45 am
I always cringe when “hard right” folks like Shane Wikfors are cruising gay websites. It’s just too Larry Craigish.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:02 am
TexAZ:
You’re right, and a lot of us have been saying the same thing for years.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s and early 2000’s Republicans framed the debate on their terms and in the process of that defined ‘liberal’ in negative terms. If you’ve ever read George Lakoff he spells it out. They still have a sophisticated network of think tanks and soundboxes that they try to use to define the debate, which we have never tried to build up to match. But Democrats have generally been smarter about defining the debate (though I have to admit I’ve been disappointed that we’ve not been on the offense regarding health care and argued that not providing basic care to all Americans is immoral in the first place– Republicans have been defining the debate there.)
Recall that when she ran for Senate in New York in 2000, Hillary Clinton won in a landslide despite the carpetbagger issue by attacking Rick Lazio for being ‘too conservative for New York.’ But I’ve rarely heard of any other campaign where a candidate won by attacking their opponent simply for being ‘a conservative.’ That still goes on all the time with the word, ‘liberal’ and we do need to rehabilitate it.