The Daily Progress‘ Bob Gibson writes about Rep. Goode’s attack on Muslims in his Sunday column, considering the impact of Goode’s words. His points about reporters as “straw men” and Goode ceasing to accept e-mail from constituents are particularly good. A tip for reading Gibson’s columns: He’s subtle. So don’t skim, because he doesn’t hammer home his points. Michael C. Hall in Dexter:murder::Bob Gibson:writing, which is to say that one mustn’t be lulled into a sense of safely by an apparent lack of forcefulness. For an example of Gibson at his most cutting, see his September piece on Dick Wadhams. 4:30pm Update: Bob Gibson has provided a clarification to his column on the matter of Rep. Goode ceasing to accept e-mail, which is that it had nothing to do with the controversy, but was simply a coincidence.
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Waldo,
It seems that Rep. Virgil Goode’s decision to turn off his e-mail over the holiday had nothing to do with the controversy about his remarks regarding Rep.-elect Ellison.
In the last sentence of the on-line version of the 12/31 Political Notebook column, I said: “But, in going long, Goode apparently made his pitch look like more of a success than it was by stopping or suspending email reception on his congressional Web site right after his office reported that his contituents were “behind him.”‘
However, Goode’s office informs me that the e-mail was turned off prior to the flap over his words about immigration and the Koran. To set the record straight, Kelly Simpson, Goode’s legislative assistant, wrote that he and Goode “wanted to clarify an issue that you bring up in your last sentence when you mentioned that his congressional email is suspended at present. I have a communication from our staffer responsible for the congressional email account which was written to the House technical support team dated Dec. 13 requesting that our email account be suspended from Dec. 14-Jan. 4 at 9:00 AM. This request was processed almost a week before any controversy over the letter in question arose and was not related to that at all, but rather to staff management for holiday vacation time. Around major holidays where it is foreseeable that staff will be leaving DC to head back to the district for vacation (e.g. Thanksgiving, Easter, Independence Day, and the present holiday season) we typically shut the emails off for a few days around that holiday. We do this because around those holidays Congress is not in session and at those times we do not have sufficient staff here in DC to respond to all the emails we receive on top of the phone calls, faxes, and constituent mail we receive (which are alternatives methods of communication that constituents can utilize while the emails are temporarily suspended). I assure you that the email suspension request for this holiday period was staff-motivated and not related to the controversy surrounding the congressman’s letter.”
The sentence about the e-mail was not included in the print edition of the column today. I certainly accept Simpson’s explanation.
Happy New Year to all,
Bob
Thanks for that, Bob. Though I don’t follow the logic of shutting off e-mail for that reason, I wouldn’t doubt the veracity of Ms. Simpson’s explanation.