Fake Outrage in Kentucky
By MARK LEIBOVICH, NYT
MARCH 3, 2014
Kentucky may be home to the country’s most closely watched Senate race, but it is no place for loose talk about Nazis. That, at least, is something Kelsey Cooper feels very strongly about. So when Cooper, the spokeswoman for the state’s Republican Party, heard that a supporter of Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate, compared the defeat of the incumbent, Mitch McConnell, to the liberation of Europe, the young operative snapped into peak indignation mode. Cooper issued a statement calling it “completely inappropriate” and “appalling.” “That kind of hateful rhetoric,” Cooper said, “has no place in public discourse in our beloved Commonwealth.” She demanded a “heartfelt apology” from Grimes.
To no one’s surprise, Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, did not apologize, heartily or otherwise. Neither did her spokeswoman, Charly Norton, who had just been in the throes of her own conniption-by-news-release. It involved an incident in which someone at the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a link to a picture of Grimes’s head superimposed over the body of Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl, the singing viral sensation. Norton accused McConnell’s campaign of implying that Grimes was “asking for it” — even though no one ever used that expression or even insinuated the association. But that was beside the point. No Grimes supporter, after all, had ever used the word “Nazi.”
All is fair in the fog of fake outrage. McConnell and Grimes may be the main combatants, but the front lines of affront in this Bluegrass State battle are occupied by the competing spokeswomen, Norton and Cooper. They brim with enthusiasm for their jobs, their candidates and their country. But perhaps more important, they are fluent in the lingua franca of chagrin, and eager to share with us — via clinically composed news release, email, tweet or whatever — how deeply troubled and appalled they are by something their opponent did, didn’t do or might possibly be associated with (they’ll leave it to the people of Kentucky to decide). Recently Cooper was beside herself that Grimes would accept a campaign donation from Woody Allen. Norton was horrified that McConnell, the Senate minority leader, would “laugh in the faces of more than 18,000 unemployed Kentuckians.”
(More here.)
MARCH 3, 2014
Kentucky may be home to the country’s most closely watched Senate race, but it is no place for loose talk about Nazis. That, at least, is something Kelsey Cooper feels very strongly about. So when Cooper, the spokeswoman for the state’s Republican Party, heard that a supporter of Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate, compared the defeat of the incumbent, Mitch McConnell, to the liberation of Europe, the young operative snapped into peak indignation mode. Cooper issued a statement calling it “completely inappropriate” and “appalling.” “That kind of hateful rhetoric,” Cooper said, “has no place in public discourse in our beloved Commonwealth.” She demanded a “heartfelt apology” from Grimes.
To no one’s surprise, Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, did not apologize, heartily or otherwise. Neither did her spokeswoman, Charly Norton, who had just been in the throes of her own conniption-by-news-release. It involved an incident in which someone at the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a link to a picture of Grimes’s head superimposed over the body of Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl, the singing viral sensation. Norton accused McConnell’s campaign of implying that Grimes was “asking for it” — even though no one ever used that expression or even insinuated the association. But that was beside the point. No Grimes supporter, after all, had ever used the word “Nazi.”
All is fair in the fog of fake outrage. McConnell and Grimes may be the main combatants, but the front lines of affront in this Bluegrass State battle are occupied by the competing spokeswomen, Norton and Cooper. They brim with enthusiasm for their jobs, their candidates and their country. But perhaps more important, they are fluent in the lingua franca of chagrin, and eager to share with us — via clinically composed news release, email, tweet or whatever — how deeply troubled and appalled they are by something their opponent did, didn’t do or might possibly be associated with (they’ll leave it to the people of Kentucky to decide). Recently Cooper was beside herself that Grimes would accept a campaign donation from Woody Allen. Norton was horrified that McConnell, the Senate minority leader, would “laugh in the faces of more than 18,000 unemployed Kentuckians.”
(More here.)
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