It’s taken a little time, but the rest of the world’s caught up to me on the whole “smear” thing.
Well, maybe that’s exaggerating, but it’s kind of affirming to be proven right — or, at least, agreed with.
First up, a while ago I talked about a long-time Democratic activist whose bid to be state chairman were scuttled by some truly vile accusations involving child pornography. At the time, I mentioned him in passing, using the phrase that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof” and that the charges sounded way too serious — and way too unsupported — to be true.
Well, the cops agreed with me. They’ve completely exonerated Buckley, and said that the accuser so thoroughly backed off his accusations that they considered filing charges against him over the whole matter.
Buckley, now having lost his dream of heading up the New Hampshire Democratic Party, is considering a lawsuit against Vaillancourt. I hope he does it.
And on the slightly less principled (but far more entertaining), Boston’s resident Herald columnist/talk show host/gadfly Howie Carr decides to pull out the “sauce for the goose” treatment over the Mitt Romney’s ancestral polygamy charges. Using his own encyclopedic knowledge about the Kennedy family (especially the dirt), he subjects Massachusetts’ senior senator (Edward Moore Kennedy, D-Chivas) to a similar scrutiny. But Howie only goes back two generations, not the four generations they had to go to find something on Romney.
I can always count on Howie. Whenever I get the impulse to do something, but don’t quite have the stomach to go for the throat, I can trust he will wallow in the mud and do it for me — and far, far better than I could have. The guy is a wonderful muckraker.
So, will this change anything? I seriously doubt it. But it’s a good sign.
