I’ve never met Rich Perlberg, the executive editor of the Livingston County Daily Press and Argus, and sometimes knowing someone helps to understand how and why some sort of kerfuffle blows up around them. Sure, I’ve been reading his editorials for years but he never really struck me as someone committed to the kerfuffle business.
Mr. Perlberg fancies himself as a conventional moderate in a county that considers Bill O’Reilly a bit left-leaning. He took a little heat back in 2007 for allowing the newspaper to be one of the sponsors for an Ann Coulter speech, but in Livingston County, Ann’s just a moderate.
I do feel a little bad for him, though. They say you’re judged by the company you keep and poor ole Rich is kind of stuck between companies right now. Progressives know he’s not about the kind of change they’re hoping for, and now conservatives have turned on him like he was working for ACORN on the side. Which I pretty much doubt, but like I said, I don’t know the man.
Back on Sept. 13 Mr. Perlberg wrote an editorial in The Daily Press and Argus in what I would call a breezy style. You know, not lots of hokey gravitas like a Southern politician would use. You could kind of see him smiling as he wrote it.
But man, the hounds of hell slipped their chains that day. Apparently, breezy is not an approved conservative literary style. In the following days Letters to the Editor column a Mr. Nelson wrote that it was written in a “childish …style” (Letters, Sept. 17) which may explain why Mr. Prystash wrote that even his 5 year old understood what the heck was going on (Letters, Sept. 17).
The game changing event Mr. Perlberg covered in his editorial was a party given by a group of non-partisan Republicans at the Brighton Millpond. August celebrities attended such as Joe the Plumber, who’d better get back to plumbing or he won’t have to worry about taxes at all anymore. Actually Joe seemed to be about the only one skipping work that day. There were stay at home moms with their (precocious) tots, retirees and small business owners, but I couldn’t see a lot of people who might have clocked out for an hour or two to attend the party. You know, guys in mechanics clothes, pressmen with inky fingers or even a McDonald’s uniform.
It’s too bad they missed it because these parties are such a riot that there’s even a band of groupies with a bus and everything following the parties around the countryside organizing these spontaneous events wherever the voice (or school video) of President Obama might be heard.
Apparently the parties are open to the public so long as the public answers the question, “Did your heart explode when you awoke last November 5 to find out McCain lost the election?” by saying “God yes,” an invocation of complicity.
Although he was in attendance, Mr. Perlberg chose not to debate obvious (at least to him) facts like the government already runs your healthcare if you have Medicare. He may have felt that if you didn’t believe that to be true, rational discussion was clearly not going to rear its controversial head. So when he got back to his office, a breezy style was adopted.
Too bad because it shows that the whole point of the party eluded Mr. Perlberg much the way the statements of Sonja Sotomayor eluded old white judges.
The point was that there were 4,000 people with 4,000 complaints and they were hoping Mr. Perlberg would make it 4001. He could have joined Joe and his rants about his deep affection for his fire arm, the retirees who promised there would be no government-run health care, the birthers who spoke of secret dark conspiracies, or even joined the people of non-color warning everyone else that, for now, they are still in the majority.
It’s too bad Mr. Perlberg didn’t reach out to these poor souls disaffected by society. They were clearly hurting and reaching out for understanding. Breezy just didn’t do it.
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