My Wednesday column and the irony of a paranoiac attacking an opponent’s mental health issues:
By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the latest David Corn scoop for Mother Jones in which he acquired a clandestinely recorded audio file of a Mitch McConnell re-election strategy meeting regarding Ashley Judd’s potential candidacy for Senate (she’s since declined to run). In the 12-minute recording from early February, McConnell aides discuss, among other things, the exploitation of Judd’s battle with depression.
So this would’ve been fair game for a man who’s the Minority Leader of the most prestigious lawmaking body, possibly in the entire world. He was plotting to attack and smear Judd because she suffered from a disease. Not only that, but they planned to use her mental health ordeal as a jumping-off point for caricaturing her as, in Corn’s words, “a weirdo.” How honorable. How respectable. How disgusting.
I’ll come back to the mental health attack presently.
Since the story broke, McConnell and the broader conservative entertainment complex rocketed into action with predictable tinfoil hat conspiracy-mongering and more than a little bit of projection, accusing Mother Jones and liberal operatives of wiretapping McConnell’s headquarters, with words like “Watergate” and “Nixon” attached to the accusations. [continue reading here]