GRATEFUL DEAD: Rich man step on my poor head,
When you get back you better butter my bread.
Well, do you know it's like I said,
You better head back to Tennessee Jed.
Always check the blogs before that second glass of wine.
If I’d checked the blogs earlier, I’d of been able to write a decent piece about tonite’s main event.
Of course you all know the story.
An African-American political wannabee carpetbagger, born far away, and barely residing in his purported constituency, a man who was utterly clueless about how to win a New York election, and lacked anything approaching a coherent rationale, but who nonetheless attracted attention bordering upon hype from those obsessed with classless chattering, has finally shown his true colors by ending his latest political endeavor almost before it ever really started, complete with a disingenuous Op-Ed piece spouting self-serving excuses and rationalizations not even he believes.
Anyone who gave it any thought the first time they heard it could see this coming a mile away.
Yes….
…Rock Hackshaw has quit his position with Councilwoman Darlene Mealy.
OK, I am relieved.
I’ve been promising and postponing my Harold Ford piece for weeks in the hopes that this would happen and save me the trouble. More than once, I’ve started a piece intending to deal with Ford as part of its contents and ended up finishing it before I could get there.
Like Kirsten Gillibrand, Ford tried to alter his positions for a new audience. Under different circumstances, I might regard this as victory, since if, for instance, same sex marriage is ever to become law, it would help to welcome converts to the cause rather than to try to bury them alive. However, Ford tried to travel a bridge too far. Prior to her appointment, Gillibrand had merely refused to support same-sex marriage; Ford had voted to ban it in every State of the Union in a manner which was virtually unrepeatable.
I had far more to say on the matter of Ford betraying the centrist Democratic principals held by the Democratic Leadership Council he leads as figurehead (the great Bruce Reed actually runs it); Ford’s slavish devotion to Wall Street is a betrayal to the DLC’s progressive pragmatism, in nearly the same manner in which Ben Nelson’s is.
But getting such an indictment right takes a lot of time and effort, and other things, including more interesting topics, kept intervening.
And now, thankfully, it is no longer worth the time and effort.
Rock Hackshaw has proven himself a New York political figure of far more lasting importance.