Finally some print reporting on 25th LD Republican nominee Hans Zeiger’s anti-gay/anti-Girl-Scout/anti-Islam/anti-Baptist agenda. In the Seattle Times? No. In the TNT? No. In the Puyallup Herald? Nope.
If you want to get ink on your fingers while reading about the controversial candidate, you’re gonna have to pick up a copy of the Seattle Gay News. And in it, you’ll find the following hilarious quote:
Alex Hays, executive director of Mainstream Republicans, told SGN that the HorsesAss piece was “intellectually dishonest” because it quoted selected articles by Zeiger “out of context.”
Huh. You know what’s really intellectually dishonest, Alex? Accusing me of being “intellectually dishonest” without disclosing to the reporter that you are also Zeiger’s political consultant.
Pot, meet kettle, and all that.
Always begs the question of, given what was quoted, how much the meaning would change with more context.
For example, would it help if you had included him saying something along the lines of, “I believe in one race, the human race, but….”
Saying that a politician was quoted out of context is an old and respected way for a politian to “deny” his/her prior statements, without actually having to repudiate them or deny that he uttered (or wrote) the words.
Of course, some statements are indeed taken out of context. We certainly saw that in the imaginative editing by the Republican operative who targeted Acorn workers and the recent flap over the FHA lady (sorry, I’ve already forgotten the names of those involved).
But what most candidates are counting on is that by making vague allegations that the quote was “taken out of context”, that 98% of the voters aren’t going to go back and read the whole piece, trying to decide whether or not the statements were quoted in their correct context. And even the journalists who bothers to ask the question probably isn’t going to be able to do a follow-up piece which prints the entire article for the benefit of the electorate. By then it’s “yesterday’s news”, and the editors want him to move on to other topics.
The only extra ‘context’ that would make Zeiger’s printed opinions palatable would be to reveal that he had been held at gunpoint for the last 7 years and forced to write that stuff.
Anything short of that would seem rather irrelevant.
‘Course we might be able to click a link and investigate “context” if he weren’t scrubbing the SkyNets.
“Out of Context”? Then he didn’t need to do all the scrubbing of the websites because everything was there for people to read in context?
Zeiger isn’t qualified for public office and never will be. Only insane voters would vote for this guy. He needs to be permanently banished from politics.
Hopefully this nutcase will get his ass kicked so hard at the polls that he’ll never run for anything again.
Funny thing, about these Tea Party folks who are running as “outsiders” against the “establishment”. But it seems that a lot of them are really professional politicians, of one sort or another.
Take O’Donnel, who just secured the Republican nomination for the Senate race in Delaware. She’s a Tea Party favorite, having been duly annointed by Sarah Palin. But if you look at her history, you see a strange work history – certainly not one typical for the average voter who’s just trying to pay their bills.
She graduated from High School in 1986, and wen to Fairleigh Dickinson University where she majored in English and Communications. After six years in college, she attended the commencement ceremony in 1993, but didn’t graduate – she was sued by the University for unpaid tuition, and was still one class short of the credits she needed for graduation. She finally completed the one course, paid the old bill, and received her B.A. degree – just a few months ago.
In the meantime, she lived in California for a while (the record is unclear how and where), before moving to Washington D.C., where she went to work for the (wait for it…) the Republican National Committee. During her tenure there she was listed as the founder of Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT) in 1996, from which she appeared in the now-infamous video statements decrying self-love.
In 2003, she went to work for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative/evangelical think-tank. But the next year she filed a $6.9 million gender discrimination suit against the Institute, alleging that it discriminated against her based upon their Biblical belief that women should be subordinate to women. But the institute defended against the suit, claiming that she was fired because she was disciplined for conducting a for-profit public relations business while working on Institute time. She dropped the suit in 2008.
In 2006, she ran for the U.S. Senate, and came in last in the Republican primary, but then mounted a write-in campaign from which she received only 4% of the vote. In 2008 she ran again for the Senate, this time against Joe Biden (who was also running as Obama’s vice-presidential candidate), and again lost. In 2008 she also was sued by her mortgage company for default on her mortgage and a judgement was issued against her for about $90,000. She avoided a foreclosure sale by selling the property to her campaign lawyer just days before the sale was scheduled to take place. She still owes rent and pay to staffers for the 2008 campaign.
So here you have a woman who’s only traceable career since college has been working for Republican-funded political or religions organizations, and is a three-time candidate for the U.S. Senate.
And she’s running as an “outsider”?????
By the way – I’m really curious about why she attended the 2003 commencement exercise. Didn’t she know she wasn’t going to receive a diploma? Didn’t it look strange for her not to walk across the stage with the rest of the class (it’s a small college, I assume they still do that there). Was she fooling herself, or trying to fool her classmates, or her parents?
Y’know what, Mr. Hays? Putting your client’s offensive and unAmerican phrases in context makes them all the worse.
@2
I agree.
Marginal political candidates count on an electorate that is unengaged and either uninformed or uncritical. And, as you point out, the electorate is mostly that way.
I’ll give the Tea People that much–they’re engaged. Uninformed and/or uncritical of any information they’re fed, but engaged.
rhp6033 you missed a little something in the discussion of her lawsuit against the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. She was asking for all of that money, saying that they kept her from pursuing a law degree at Harvard, and thus deprived her of that level of earnings. That she hadn’t graduated from college, nor applied at Harvard didn’t really matter at all to her. The suit was dropped.
Rabbit: keep in mind that “not qualified” is now viewed as a positive thing in TbaGGer / HAtroll circles. Has been the same way with right wingers for decades since Reagan…
So Hans Zeiger passes for a “MAINSTREAM Republican” these days? There are plenty of “right-wing” Republicans who think the MAINSTREAM folks are RINOs. So if Zeiger is on the much-less-conservative wing of the party …
# 12: I heard it was an MBA program at Princeton, not a law degree at Harvard. I did omit it for the sake of brevity, as the post was pretty long at that point anyway.
Since she didn’t even have an undergraduate degree at that point, and she hadn’t even applied for a program (much less accepted), her claim is pretty hard to figure out. Try to follow the logic, if you will:
(a) I understand that she resigned, which she would have to convince the court was “constructive termination”.
(b) She would have to prove the basis of her complaint (that discrimination did occur, and was a proximate cause of her termination, either explicit or constructive).
(c) That instead of settling for simply payment of back pay and attorney’s fees, she is entitled to additional consequential damages in the form of a “lost opportunity” to get an advanced degree and much higher pay in the future based upon such a degree. The basic premise is that she needed the lost income to pay for such an advanced education.
(c) This includes the assumption that despite not yet having an undergraduate degree, she would be accepted into an Ivy League program (perhaps she figured if G.W. Bush could do it, so could she.)
(d) She then she assumes that she could graduate from an advanced degree (MBA or Law) in one year. This is a pretty flakey assumption, since it took her over a decade to get an undergraduate degree, few MBA candidates get their degree in only one year, and a law degree takes three years.
(e) She then assumes that she would get a high-paying job as a lawyer, or in a consulting firm as an MBA. Some do, but most don’t make that much money (right now, the market is pretty bad in both fields).
She claims she dropped the lawsuit in 2008 because she didn’t have the money to pursue it. I don’t doubt that is the case, but in general employment discrimination lawsuits are brought on a contingent-fee basis, with the lawyer taking his fees at the end of the case. If her lawyers refused to pursue it on that basis, it tells you that her lawyers didn’t give it much chance of success.
Somebody ought to ask her about her opinion on “frivilous lawsuits”, whether lawyers should get contingent fees, and whether employers should be awarded attorneys’ fees when their employees bring suits against them which they later lose or drop.
From what rhp6033 discusses, I’d say that Ms. O’Donnell could graduate from the Orly Taitz School of Law very quickly. Seems like she’d bring a lot of Advanced Placement credits with her.
Goldy: I did tell him. I said I was an advisor to the campaigna and a friend to Hans and talked to him frequently. Therefore I really did know Hans and was qualified to discuss his beleifs and values. So I’ll need to talk to your editor about a retraction or correction to this article…
@17,
good luck talking to Goldy’s editor.
# 17: Goldy has an editor?????
That fundraising campaign must be doing better than expected!
Alex @17,
Drop me an email and we’ll chat. goldy at horsesass.org