Swami, what's the ugliest moment so far in the election process in Illinois? Anybody come off as a real toadstool? Signed: Amphibian in Antioch
Ah, where to begin, Am?
For sheer mean ignoramus-osity, we give the nod squarely to 8th District Republican congressional whizbang Steve Greenberg who has stirred up a 1,500 year blood feud by arguing his foe, Melissa Bean, is a secret friend and agent of Serbian Neo-Fascist terrorists.
Hard criticism for a woman who mostly wears pastel business suits.
He's even gone so far as to begin identifying her with her maiden name, Luburich, which has its origin in Serbia.
As with many misaimed political missiles, this one started with Bean giving Greenbrrg a small opening with a tactical mistake. Though she opposes the Prez's support for Kosovar independence (as do many of the globe's nations), Bean erred in having a fund-raising dinner at the home of the Serbian consul general in Chicago. It was his wife, an American-born lawyer of note, who was actually hosting the soiree but Greenberg leaped at Bean's throat with all fangs bared.
First of all, if you want to run for Congress, there are plenty of current wars over which to have a fist fight rather than sliding back into the goo of the Serbian-Albanian scuffle which Bill Clinton put on hold momentarily with a pre-emptive bombing run.
How ingrained is the argument? One side quotes the unfairness of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia as a pretext for continuing hostility, for crying out loud. WESTPHALIA!
This is an argument that no one is going to settle in our lives (even though Swami is now 252 years old and has another good century-and-a-half to go), and the fact the Prez has sided with Kosovo doesn't end the dispute.
So, Bean has natural reasons to support the Serbian position and receive money from Serbian Americans.
Swami takes no side for now on the ancient, underlying dispute, but he does find it reprehensible that Greenberg calls out Bean this way: "Congresswoman Melissa Bean is flagrantly working on behalf of foreign interests, against the interests of the United States. This is an outrage and today I am asking for an investigation of Ms. Bean's activities as an agent for a foreign government."
When you call a sitting U.S. congresswoman an agent of foreign powers, that tends to get attention.
Swami's view? This as a temper tantrum by an inexperienced candidate who now senses he's not going to win the election and is casting about in the dark for any rock to throw. Desperation can be ugly.
His is a spiteful position, rife with cultural undertones and barely veiled hate talk. Remember the price for inheriting the wind.
And it doesn't help Greenberg that some of the leading conservative political practitioners are on the other side of the Serb-Kosovo issue. Greenberg hasn't called Lawrence Eagleburger a Serbian terror patsy, yet.
If Greenberg wants to debate Bean on the issue of which side in a 16-century-old conflagration is right, Swami says be our guest.
But calling someone a traitor just because they disagree with your position is a low and unbecoming tactic and, more to the point, it doesn't positively distinguish a person seeking to sit in Congress.
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