Discussion for article #225862
Wait, you mean to tell me that all these stories we read like the one about FitzGerald being âcaughtâ in a car with a (oh, Nelly, fetch me my smelling salts!) woman to whom he was not married, are fed to our Intrepid Mainstream Media Ace Reporter Hawks by shadowy partisan operatives and vomited out to the reading public without much vetting or concern regarding whether the innuendo attached to them is accurate? Iâm shocked, shocked, I tell you.
Itâs definitely pearl-clutching night on TPM
This is looking more and more like a bungled attempt at Republican ratf*ckery.
And thatâs your real scandal. How can the Republicans run Ohio if they canât even run a negative smear campaign properly?
Thatâs aout the state of our media today and it is beyond pathetic.
About 30 years ago or so, Westlake, OH, in western Cuyahoga County, was pretty solidly Democratic and a quaint, mostly-wooded suburb with a small population. But new money Repubs flooded in and transformed the town, and now itâs basically one gigantic upscale mall interspersed with mega-McMansions and mega-churches, itâs almost complete de-forested, and it has become a right-wing bastion.
Speaking of right-wing idiots, true story about Westlakeâs Mayor Clough, I swear: When he first ran for mayor years ago, he and his wife were going door-to-door doing meet-and-greet, and came to my friendâs house where we were watching a movie. My buddy answered the door, and Clough and his wife were there. Clough said, haltingly, "Hello! Are you the âWill-cahm-mayâ family? My buddy and I looked at each other, and asked âWhat?â Clough repeated: âIs Mr. Will-cahm-mayâ at home? We looked at each other, thinking âWTF?â and told him that there was no one by that name that lived there. He then pointed down and said, âOh, I thought that must be the familyâs nameâ . . . and we realized he was pointing at THE âWELCOMEâ MAT! We laughed for the whole night about what a total jackass the guy was, and he obviously hasnât changed in all these years.
Is this another GOP âinvestigationâ in which there is no there there? Good grief, when will these sleazebags stop their undercover nonsense and actually discuss policies?
I love the smell of desperation in the morning. It smells like victory.
Itâs opposition research. Both sides do it. FitzGerald was a fool to think a incident involving the police wasnât going to get out.
If it was an innocent mistake then release the police. If he doesnât then he probably was having sex. Apologize and try to move on.
âŚand the GOP will provide the not-the-wife womanâŚ
It isnât fair and it isnât right, but the fact of todayâs politics is this: If youâre a Democrat, you have to be more moral than a Mormon Eagle Scout. Republicans will dig up anything there is, by legal and illegal means, and they will get away with it. We canât do the same to them.
Democratic politicians, take note. We know sleaze crosses party lines. But save the sleaze for your lame-duckness year.
TPM needs to do a better job with its set up. First of all Fitzgerald was in a car at 4:30am with a women, not his wife, back in 2012. That is the catalyst for this case of Republican dirty tricks. No charges were filed, police said nothing was going on. Fitzgeraldâs explanations are weak, but no evidence of wrong is here. Yet the Republican Gov. Assc. and Mayor Clough were complicit in seek dirt on Fitzgerald as he tries to unseat Governor Kasich in Nov. Cloughâs answer is complete duplicity, but he could neither pronounce nor spell it. But the RGA and Clough tried to tie Fitz to Andrea Rocco, an innocent public servant, because she is a female, and the cityâs law director at one time. The Republicans are sleazy, and they are funded by big corporate $$$.