Chutzpah

Chutzpah has been described as "...that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."

Today I got a report from a reliable source that Ben Tribbett has exhibited that same quality. Ben (get your own links to his site) complained this weekend, at a Republican event, about the Poindexter campaign's use of the ODBA/NAMBLA scandal in mail pieces.

Ben, who is in this scandal just as deeply as his friend Joey Stanley, actually complained to a noted Republican about a mailer that tied Eric Ferguson to Joey Stanley, the co-perpetrator of the NAMBLA scandal, about their use of the issue. I say that Joey is a co-perpetrator because the scandal would never have occurred if Ben had not sent another Virginia blogger a link to a website he knew to have been fraudulently created by Stanley which linked the Old Dominion Blog Alliance to NAMBLA, a group that openly endorses the sexual exploitation of underage boys.

To add even more comedy to this scenario, Ben then asked this Republican to get him into the annual premier Republican meeting, the Advance. He even asked if he could just shadow along behind as a part of this Republican's "entourage", as if my rural Republican friend has ever had an "entourage."

Ben and Joey, face it. You two screwed up badly on this one. Franklin County people who know nothing of blogs were talking about this issue. Talking a lot. I'm convinced it had a lot to do with Ferguson's defeat, especially when it was juxtaposed alongside Ferguson's record of dirty, negative campaigning against Allen Dudley two years ago.

Ben, when we first met last year I took a liking to you. I admire your ability to analyze political campaigns, I was amazed when I discovered that you do it all in a notebook without the help of a spreadsheet application. This issue, however, has caused me to completely re-examine my opinion of you. Collaborating with Joey Stanley in perpetrating this travesty was bad enough, but then complaining when it turned around on your chosen candidate and then attempting to use the one who called Joey on it to gain access to an event you had no right to attend is the ultimate in chutzpah.

Perhaps Dictionary dot com should amend their definition.