Thursday, March 04, 2010

As a matter of fact, no, I don't.

Citizen Tom left a rather long comment on my post about Bob Marshall, which I shall reproduce here in its entirety:

Since Borepatch led me to your blog, you may as well read what I left on his blog. It applies to you as well.

QUOTE
I think you are being too harsh on Delegate Bob Marshall. The reason is obvious. You don' live in Virginia. So you are judging the man based upon one statement. That is unfair, and you are old enough to know better. Based upon what I have had time to read of your blog, I suspect you are also wise enough to know better.

Marshall is a solid Conservative. He believes in limited government and is fiscally conservative. Because Marshall also is a Social Conservative, much of Virginia's corporate news media utterly hates his guts. So they constantly use any opportunity to harass him. However, because Marshall speaks thoughtfully and carefully, he rarely gives them any opportunity.

Note that Marshall has been in office since 1991. He represent a district in Northern Virginia, not exactly a red necked backwater. Even though his opponents outspend him every two years, he has won reelection every two years. In fact, in our last Senate election (Federal office), he fell only a few votes short of receiving the Republican Party's nomination.

Is Marshall perfect? No. That honor belongs to God.

Since I rather doubt you would appreciate being judged the same way you judged him, I think it fair to say you owe Marshall an apology."
UNQUOTE
 The emphasis, of course, is mine.  And, well, no, I do not owe Bob Marshall an apology.

Borepatch (in a post I unconscionably missed) covered the same topic, and provides a transcript of the entire thing.  I'm not going to reproduce it here, because it's very long, but here's the thing:

He said exactly what the article I cited quoted him as saying.

If the article had misquoted him, that would be one thing, and I would most certainly apologize.  But it didn't.  And so I will not.

Am I perfect?  No.  No one is, and I have never claimed to be.  But I will say this, without reservation: if I ever say anything that morally abhorrent, judge me.  HARSHLY.  Because I will deserve it.

4 comments:

Borepatch said...

I'm causing trouble, I see. Again.

Citizen Tom left the same comment at my place, almost word for word.

Your approach is different than mine, but it seems we ended up in the same place (although I did mine in the comments).

BobG said...

He wasn't misquoted, so I still say Marshall is an asshole for saying something like that.

kahr40 said...

I don't care what his politics are. That comment was unacceptable. No one owes him an apology. He owes his constituents one.

Citizen Tom said...

Sabra - It is easy to be manipulated on a subject you know nothing about. You are judging Bob Marshall (wrong in any case), and you know nothing about him. You also have no reason to be concerned about him. He represents me, not you.

However, since you insist upon posting about it, you may as well know something about the subject. So here are a couple of posts.

http://citizentom.com/2010/02/25/how-propaganda-works/

http://citizentom.com/2010/03/03/a-dishonorable-tactic-%e2%80%94-part-2/