when election time rolls around, the normally reserved and rational gary welsh at advance indiana starts getting hot under the collar. i spent a lot of time last year analyzing the outlandish things he said regarding the carson-dickerson race, among others, but probably won't spend nearly so much time on that this year (in part because, if you take my writings from last year and do some basic search-and-replace, such as replacing "julia carson" with "bart peterson" and "congress" with "mayor", a bunch of it would probably still apply).

until last night, this comment from june was probably my favorite gary quote of all time:

You've earned a place in hell, Wilson, for the character assassination you engaged in last year against both Dickerson and Kris Kiser, two people who never did anything to bring harm to you. How could a person set out to cause such harm to two individuals with whom you had no prior connection? Is it political victory at any cost for you and your dear lady?

telling one of your commenters that they've "earned a place in hell" is pretty over-the-top. in fact, it sounds like the kind of thing that one of those right-wing homobigots would say (the ones gary says are ruining the GOP). but far from apologizing or expressing remorse, gary actually repeated the claim a couple weeks later.

but as great as those quotes are, they were written in comments, where many readers will never see them. so i think they might have been bumped out of first place by this quote, which currently appears right on the front page:

A well-respected, long-time journalist in town once told me that she had it on good authority that Carson also practiced voodoo. I suppose if she's reading the stars to make important office decisions, almost anything is possible.

now, i understand that some might find it newsworthy that julia carson dabbles with astrology, like millions of americans. but to jump from that to seriously suggesting that our congresswoman practices voodoo? that's... amazing. and of course, gary's commenters eat it up like candy.

update: come to think of it, the "carson practices voodoo" meme mixes quite nicely with that old myth about the thousands of dead black folks who republicans believe rise from their graves in order to vote democratic every november...¶

i think you mean astrology, not astronomy.

but to confuse astrology (which, let's not forget, nancy reagan for one was hugely into) with voodoo is absurd. i guess all that wacky non-christian stuff is the same to some people... ¶

oops, i should read the links before commenting. he's not confusing them, per se, but definitely equating them. i'd actually bet that there's relatively little overlap between astrology devotees and voodoo practitioners, they're each coming from very different spiritual traditions. ¶

If we could raise the dead, there are so many more important things we could do than voting.

We could raise up a Zombie Marie Curie to bite the heads off the intelligent design people. Hmmm. I should call Julia...

This would be the reason I don't read Gary's blog (or several other local ones) anymore. ¶

damn those "astro-" words! that's how they get ya! ¶

like Astro-Glide? ¶