My Response

I must ask for a point of personal privilege. This column and its author have been under full scale attack all day by one Markos Zuniga and his small-minded henchmen at The Daily Kos. I will not link to that site. I will not give them the satisfaction or the increased web traffic, which they so desperately crave.

To newer readers, some background on the friction between IBP and The Daily Kos might prove illustrative. During the 2004 Presidential campaign, a “tipster” in whom I placed great confidence, advised that Democratic Presidential candidate, John Kerry, had been arrested for public drunkenness in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 2002. He also forwarded me documentation, including the relevant police report, backing his claim.

I carry no brief for either political party. However, such an explosive revelation provided insight into the character of the man who would be the leader of the free world, and I felt it important that such information be injected into the national debate.

Following the publication of the information, this column and its author were besieged by a firestorm of criticism. Leading the charge was The Daily Kos, Zuniga and his libelous minions, and being the recipient of their spewed fury was an experience which I was not eager to repeat. One does not easily forget the first time that one is called a “right-wing scumbag”.

We need not go on at length now, how upon closer inspection the named individual in the report was “Jon Currie”, how the arrest photograph showed a man with a full beard and distinctive forehead mole, how the arrest date happened to coincide with the night of Mr. Kerry’s 2002 senate inauguration and a well-witnessed swirl of parties in Washington, D.C. This is old ground and not of moment.

However, this history does provide a backdrop to the wrath incurred by my publication yesterday of a Guest Journal. I firmly take issue with the statement, “The right-wing scumbag and blowhard has now lowered himself to publishing the raving, lunatic Republican fantasies of pedophiles!!!”

Firstly, as previously stated, I do not care for the appellation, “right-wing scumbag” or any of the other more profane labels which now dot that website’s comments section. Such juvenile invective is beneath civilized discourse.

In reference to yesterday’s Guest Journal, I believed that the piece had a certain Robert Frost-like pathos, which gave the work a haunting quality. I never vouched for the author’s accuracy in his recollection of the Reagan era. I will candidly admit to you that in the eighties, I was at a place in my life where I was not attuned to the country’s political affairs.

Lastly, I have read and re-read the piece, and note nothing contained therein which could lead to the conclusion that its author is a pedophile. Such a malicious accusation can only be attributed to a deliberate effort to smear me by association.