Stupid is as stupid does
By Jennifer J. Foster
It’s unfortunate that the antics of a loose-cannon radio host from Huntsville are going to overshadow the results of the special election to fill the seat of U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith.
The vote was held yesterday, and Republican Paul Sanford notched a big win over Democrat Laura Hall.
This race has been ugly for several weeks—race has been an issue—but ugly turned stupid on Election Day.
You can read all the gory details over at the Parlor, but the bottom line is that the radio host, Dale Jackson, posted an official-looking memo that purported to detail a deal that had been worked out by elections officials to have Republicans vote on Tuesday and Democrats on Wednesday.
What’s that you say? You remember that stupid joke from last fall, when it filled your e-mail box 47 times from different people?
Yes, that’s the same stupid joke.
The deal was supposedly struck because of concerns about high voter turnout.
I know what you’re thinking. What? Concerns about high turnout? Turnout is notoriously low for special elections.
Yes, it is.
It gets worse. The supposed “deal” was worked out at 5 a.m. on Election Day, just two hours before polls opened.
And the kicker: Elections officials supposedly determined who would vote when based on a coin flip. A COIN FLIP.
Come on. Who would believe that garbage?
Well, either a good number of people did, or folks involved in the campaigns thought they might. So around 3 p.m., Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman released a statement (on real official stationery) reminding people that, no, everyone votes on one day, so hurry up and get to the polls.
Good grief.
The upshot of all this was that Sanford won an unexpected victory, and Hall’s campaign may cry foul—or worse.
For his part, Jackson did post Chapman’s clarification/correction on his site, where the fake “news release” had been. But later, as the you-know-what started to hit the fan, Jackson said that “if people were dumb enough to fall for his stunt and didn’t turn out to vote today, it was their own fault,” according to the Huntsville Times.
Danny, who runs the Parlor, called that “a statement remarkable in its unapologetic self-absolution.“
It’s rare that I read something that I wish I had written. But that brilliant characterization is one example.
As the number shake out, we will probably know more about the impact, if any, this stupid stunt had on the election. But I agree with my blogger friend, Brian, who lives in Huntsville: Sanford’s margin of victory was about 3,000 votes, or 15 percentage points. There’s no way that 3,000 Hall voters believed that stunt or were even listening to Jackson’s radio show or viewing his web site when the stunt took place.
So the bottom line, then, is that Jackson has done an incredibly stupid thing, but it’s unlikely that his stupifying stupidity changed the end results of the election.
Jackson is a lucky man. If the race had been closer, it’s a very real possibility that he could have faced heavy federal penalties—including jail time—for trying to suppress turnout. And there is a racial layer to all of this, too; Hall is a black woman, and Jackson is a white man. I’m pretty sure the Department of Justice would be interested in looking into Jackson’s involvement in this, had it been closer. Jackson might have found it funny, but I don’t think Eric Holder would have agreed.
But the margin of victory notwithstanding, Jackson should still face consequences. I think he should be fined by the state for his “creation” of that official-looking news release, and the attorney general should look into whether he has committed a crime by misappropriating the state seal.
And then there is the issue of his radio show. I’m not familiar with the local situation up there in Huntsville, but I would hope that the people of that Senate district—Republicans and Democrats, whites and blacks and everyone else—would band together to demand that Jackson’s station managers put him on an immediate hiatus. Jackson needs time to achieve an attitude adjustment. What he did was not funny or clever. It wasn’t witty or even entertaining. It was just stupid, and it was plain wrong.
If he can’t acknowledge that simple reality, then he has a break with reality, and he doesn’t need to be on the air, anyway.
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