When Will the Mainstream Media Report That Alan Grayson Is Nuts?
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida), vampire fighter, scourge of harlots, courageous Wallenberg in the GOP genocide, puckish master of political rough and tumble, is being ignored by the establishment media. Just look at how The New York Times, ABC, Salon, Mother Jones and CBS won't give him the time of day. Meanwhile, the Tea Baggers keep getting all the glamour shots.
So in the Huffington Post, Grayson stands athwart the groundswell of groundswellism and cries "Hold, Enough!"
But the House candidate who raised the most money in the entire country during the last FEC reporting period—$860,000 in three months—is not a teabagger. He is not boosted relentlessly by Fox News. He's not even a Republican. He doesn't think that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, that President Obama was born in Kenya, or that global warming is a hoax.
This House candidate also, remarkably, had the largest number of contributors. Over 15,000 individuals contributed, many of whom have given time after time, whatever they could. The House candidate who raised the most money did so without French-kissing lobbyists, without flattering the idle rich, and without reaching into his own pocket.
The House candidate who raised the most money, from the most people, is an outspoken populist who tells it like it is on the war, on jobs, and on health care. His website is called CongressmanWithGuts.com. In the 100,000 e-mails that he has received this year, the most common refrain is, "You are saying what I've been thinking."
I know who he is. Because he's me.
But no one has reported that the House candidate who raised the most money, from the most people, is a proud Democratic populist. No one.
If I were a leftwing preteen, I'd want to be sexually molested by Alan Grayson. He's the kind of madcap every session of the House of Representatives should have a few dozen of. If he has truly raised the "most money from the most people," we must say: "Good on him."
Well, we could also say, "Who cares?" Is early February some kind of fundraising milestone we haven't been told about? Just three weeks before she was slaughtered in last month's Massachusetts U.S. Senate election, Martha Coakley had a three-to-one funding advantage over Scott Brown. And that's the Senate, the chamber the media pay attention to—not because they're against beefy-faced progressives but because, as Lyndon Johnson told George H.W. Bush, "The difference between being a senator and being a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit."
Is Grayson a Congressman With Guts or a Congressman Who's Nuts? In politics you have to choose one or the other, but under capitalism you can have both.