A Nut Case

In the Oct. 4 "New Yorker," Rebecca Mead (left) begins an article about Delaware's GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, Christine O'Donnell (for whom I wouldn't vote, incidentally), and other Tea Party conservatives with a long paragraph about Great Britain's Official Monster Raving Loony Party. "One [candidate] promised to stick juvenile delinquents together with Super Glue," Mead writes, "and one...campaigned on an anti-gravity platform." Mead explicitly puts O'Donnell in this category and lists the reasons: She wears a beehive hairdo at times, went through a Goth phase, is an evangelical Christian who opposes premarital sex and homosexuality, and defaulted on a mortgage.

It troubles me when people call those with whom they disagree crazy. The Soviet Union took the concept to its logical extreme by imprisoning dissidents in mental hospitals. "The New Yorker" just thought it was being funny. But its Googleicious attack on O'Donnell didn't contribute anything to the reader's understanding of her popularity. Calling somebody nuts in tendentious 15-sentence paragraphs is the Upper East Side equivalent of Tea Party signs attacking President Obama. Whether written on a MacBook or poster board from Michael's, they contribute in equal measure to everybody's favorite subject (besides their rivals' moral unworthiness, of course): Declining civility.

Call Me Crazy

"The New Republic" presents a "comprehensive guide to the craziest statements Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell has made in public" and includes this:

Sex is a covenant between a man and a woman and God. … Your job is to satisfy the other, the giving of oneself to another. Porn turns that around.

Overtly theological, yes. Heterosexist, perhaps. But crazy? I'd say truthful. Covenantal servanthood (or mutuality, if you prefer a secular term) is one of the keys to a joyful human life. It's little evidences such as this of the divide between elites and, if I may, everyday Americans that has me thinking not only that the GOP is going to run the table in November but that Christine O'Donnell's probably going to win in Delaware.

An Average Lying, Defaulting Tax Cheat?

A Politico analysis suggests that voters are setting the bar pretty low this season when it comes to leadership values:

[Delaware GOP senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell] “hasn’t had a steady job in years,” according to one account, and she had lied about being a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, which had sued for unpaid student loans. She also had failed to pay her federal taxes and defaulted on her house payments.

Which, to some, made her an average American. They found it easy to identify with her, feel her pain and vote for her.

Timmy To Amber: Is It True You're A Witch?

A new campaign anthem for Christine O'Donnell, the ex-pagan candidate for Joe Biden's Senate seat in Delaware. Just tell 'em Christmas is like Solstice! This is folksinger and songwriter Dar Williams performing last year in Teaneck (as opposed to Tea Party), New Jersey. While "The Christians and the Pagans" is actually a wise and wonderful song, we'll have to see how it plays in November.