When They Listen To Kevin Dujan, They Are! More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About the Cook County "Sex Scandal," Because Someone Asked

Chicago Deep Dish

"Anonymous" has written in to ask, regarding the "Prophet Making" Post,

"Then Huffpo is crazy?" (Immediate, visceral response: always!)

Anonymous then links to Will Guzzardi's (of the Huffpo Chicago "Bureau!") piece of July 28th, about the resignation of the young (23) executive director of the Cook County GOP, aka, in the overheated rhetorical stylings of Kevin Dujan, "The Prophet."

Bearing in mind that Snarkopolitan is run by a New York liberal with as much interest in the slimy underside of Illinois Republican politics as she has in the lineup of the Chicago Bears (less!), and no journalistic experience whatsoever, anything I write should be taken accordingly (that is, well-salted). With that proviso, let's wade into the goo:

There are two camps at each other's throats, as Anonymous surely knows better than I: the Lee Roupas camp and the Eloise Gerson camp. The "Prophet," aka Jeremy Rose, is a Roupassard, and Stephen Boulton, General Counsel for the Chicago GOP, is a Gersonian.

The Huffpo article, by Will Guzzardi (of the Huffpo Chicago "bureau!") clearly favors the Gersonians. Writing about how a complaint against Rose that was a year old, and had been settled to the satisfaction of the complainant, got brought up again, Guzzardi says,

"And when a whistleblower came forward about the complaint, Roupas organized a concerted effort to remove that person from her elected position within the party."

Well, that's how Eloise Gerson, the "whistleblower," would characterize it. But if you read this article by Michael Volpe, it looks like a giant, messy power struggle, with Gersonians accusing Roupassards of secret Democratism, and Roupassards accusing Gerson of being a just plain crummy Chairwoman whose fundraising promises were unmet. Gerson's counsel Boulton has a special dislike for Rose for "insulting him" in unspecified ways, and everybody was pretty much angling to oust everybody else, and treating any moves by the other faction as outrageous, ought to be illegal, never in my 32 years as a Republican have I seen, etc. There are meetings without Ms. Gerson (condolences on her cat. And on the in-laws coming to town), and meetings with Ms. Gerson, and Rashomonic accounts from the opposing camps of all of them, which I am not going to try to untangle.

But according to T. Mannis, a conservative blogger who operates Chicago News Bench, this power struggle was at least 18 months old, and so predates the Cubby Bear Unhappy Hour, subsequent unpleasant encounter, complaint, and resolution of the complaint to the satisfaction of the complainant.

So Gerson has an axe to grind, which the Huffpo writer should have discovered and noted, and didn't.(BTW, a bio of Mr. Guzzardi shows him to be the founder of a pretty great-looking online magazine called Wag's Revue. I've nothing against Mr. Guzzardi at all, except that he seems to have taken a few too many people at face value.

He didn't have the advantage I did in being tipped to Kevin Dujan's propensity for concocting lunatic, baroque scenarios, not having been the innocent target of one. Even so, when he links to Hillbuzz repeatedly, he doesn't question certain things that really ought to stand out to a humor writer, like the similarity in tone (ridiculous/ridiculous) between "Roxy Vanilla" and Hillbuzz.

He writes,

"HillBuzz had in fact received a copy of the complaint against Rose more than a year ago; due to a HillBuzz blogger's personal connections to the story, it was not published. But when the Roxy Vanilla email implicated Roupas in covering up the allegations, HillBuzz spoke out--and has been closely following the story since.

"The root of the scandal is something that should have warranted jail time for [Rose]...but he has been protected and helped, apparently, by the likes of Roupas ... all this time," the blogger wroteon July 12."

How brave of Hillbuzz to "speak out!" And how less than objective a way to phrase it. But if"Hillbuzz" (whom we now know is just plain old Kevin) believes that what Rose did "is something that should have warranted jail time," then why did Hillbuzz also suppress this complaint, for an entire year? Instead, because of "personal connections," Hillbuzz sat on a story that could have spared young women the ordeal of being pursued by the Prophet,

"swimming the YR waters like a shark, hunting for seals in this ample rookery. "

And the "personal connections?

For over a year now, we’ve been aware of an explosive scandal that’s been rocking the Chicago Young Republicans, but because we know all parties involved in this personally, we have not spoken of it. One of the people involved has a romantic link to one of us here, so the whole thing is messy on so many levels.

A romantic link---to the shark, in fact! That is messy. If Mr. Guzzardi had just googled "Dujan," he would have discovered what best buds Rose and Dujan used to be. Since there has been so much messiness since the Huffpo article was written, the Timeout Chicago feature doesn't come up unless you Google their names together. But a year ago, it would have popped up on the first or second page, as it did for me and other people writing about Dujan in the time of our own travails.

Nobody can blame Mr. Guzzardi for not wading through all the bubbling pits of adjectives and bile that constitute the Hillbuzz Scandal-birthing Swamp to find the aformentioned description of "the Prophet" on July 16, a week before the Huffpo piece appeared:

Unbalanced, vainglorious, and vindictive, yet exceedingly charming and bisexually attractive,

Projection much, Kevin? But "bisexually attractive," combined with "a romantic link," ought to have set off an alarm bell somewhere. Well, that and the fact that in the comments of that same piece, the Shark turns into "Mr. Blondy Sleepy Needs His Coffee Bear."

T. Mannis had the advantage of getting one of the Roxy Vanilla emails from the wrong email address. "theswordandtherose," another dubious adventure in rococo nomenclature. Mannis recognised that the email shared the same distinctive voice as Roxy Vanilla, but was signed differently: "Concerned CYRs," But over on Hillbuzz, the selfsame text was touted as THE LATEST EMAIL! coming straight from Roxy Vanilla. Whoops!

Mannis's reaction:

"If Hillbuzz would forward the email he claims to be from Roxy Vanilla to me, I'll be satisfied. I don't know if Hillbuzz even reads this blog, but if he reads this post he'll probably laugh this off and shout "F--- you, Mannis, you bug!" at his computer screen. Of course, he won't be able to hear you or me shouting "Prove it, Hillbuzz!" at our keyboards."

I would never want to minimize the seriousness of sexual harassment. But Hillbuzz turns the "sexual harassment" charge, which was settled to the satisfaction of the complainant, into "attempted date-rape," which actually does minimize the seriousness of date-rape:

• A young woman met a young man at a social function held in a bar.
• Walked, in the company of other people, to his apartment, despite being unsettled by his putting his hands on, according to her complaint, her neck, and her waist (outside the apartment) and her thigh (inside the apartment). They were still in the company of other people.
• Where, when she wanted to go, he sat on her lap and took her cell phone, which she found threatening.
• The other woman who was there didn't like this at all, grabbed her, and got her out of there.
• The young woman complained to Rose's higher-ups.
• Rose issued an apology.
• The young woman accepted, and considered the matter closed, according to the Huffpo article: This issue was dealt with in the manner that I requested it to be dealt with and I consider it to be done and over with," she said in a recent email.

No mention is made of any clothes coming off, or private parts being touched, or a struggle of any sort. A larger, stronger guy sat in a smaller, weaker, woman's lap, after a boozy evening, in the presence of other people. This makes him a creep, undoubtedly, but is this the "explosive sexual scandal?"

The rest of the allegations are squishy, vague, anonymous of course, and treat young women (and men, Kevin reminds us) as if they were entirely helpless naifs, or seal pups, or something similarly uncomprehending and without volition. But if any other complaints of even slightly coercive behavior were made, nobody, not Hillbuzz or Roxy Vanilla or Eloise Gerson, mentions it. All we get is that the "Prophet" trolls CYR for bed partners, and finds them. Which Gerson (billed inHillbuzz's snappy graphics as " TRUTHTELLER") finds "shocking."

Guzzardi did interview Roupas, and says he was "frequently evasive in an interview," but gives no details of when, where, or how. Roupas claimed "not to know enough of the allegations to believe them," according to the Huffpo writer. Gerson's counsel, Steve Boulton, helpfully signed a statement saying that he'd told Roupas about the allegations in a phone call, but did not email him. The complainant had expressed her wish that the entire issue be handled internally, so as not to hurt the image of the Chicago Young Republicans, so Boulton seems here to be going against her wishes himself in taking the matter up with Cook County Republicans.

Since Snarkopolitan has no position or care in the world about who wins the title of Least Mud-Encrusted in the Illinois GOP Scuzz-Ball Invitational, I'm not going to join the fray on whether or not Lee Roupas should have hired Jeremy Rose, covered up his knowledge of the complaint or didn't think it serious enough to warrant attention, or which people should be forced out of where. If you want to see somebody who really enjoys a good mire-wallowing, with sides of muck-throwing, sliming, cheap moralizing, and double-dealing, you know where to find him.

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, who reminds you, she didn't pick this subject, this subject picked her!

A Gift From Mr. Flibberly

No, not the usual sparkly thingy.

A much Flashier thingy!

Here.

~~Thank you, Mr. Flibberly.~~

(Conservative 'Splodey Brain Warning: on a scale of 1-10, I rate Mr. Flibberly's Flash thingy at 3 'Splodey Brains. Please bee advised and proceed accordingly. ; 0)

Mucking Around With Chicago Young Republicans: Hillbuzz's Prophet-Making Enterprise

Identities shielded out of sheer embarrassment for the subjects

The absurd little man who once selected Snarkopolitan for random target practice, Kevin Dujan, aka Harvey Bilk, Lord Of The Flies at $hillbuzz (on right, sporting air of mystery and overactive antennae), collected his first real scalp this summer. Based largely on the paranoid Palinophile's not very reliable say-so, his erstwhile buddy, the president of Chicago Young Republicans (above, in pink turban) (and a purported member of the Mittens Mafia of Romney thuggery!!!) was forced out, and now Harvey's clamoring for more scalps. And more.

Harvey's confabulatory antics are well known to Snarkopolitan's, and other, rightier blogs', regular readers, and I really wasn't going to revive this post, but since Harvey's wading back into the icky goo of Chicago politics, a little perspective might be a good thing.

Time was when Harvey and the turbaned fellow above were, as a Chicago magazine put it, "Unlikely Friends." Heck, as the tagline says, "They’d probably be enemies if they weren’t best buds!" Oh true, oh inarguable! The friendship, in fact, must have gone awfully sour.

First, let's consider this quote:

"Unbalanced, vainglorious, and vindictive, yet exceedingly charming and bisexually attractive, “The Prophet” was fired by the Murphy campaign"

"The Prophet?" What is this, an airport paperback? It is fiction, isn't it? Triply adjectival horrible fiction?

It isn't fiction? Well, in a way. It is another Dujanian brew of Gothic poli-romance junk fiction, with more unsubstantiated accusations by mysterious anonymous shadow figures than populate the crumpled contents of Danielle Steele's wastebasket. "The Prophet," Dujan insists, is in fact the very same young man with whom he is posed up there as the Beast With Two Fronts!

And, even better, the unnamed group that emails Hillbuzz (and a few other Chicago RW polibloggers, not all of whom are persuaded) calls itself, ludicrously, "Roxy Vanilla."

This blog's interest in the particulars of Chicago Republican politics is miniscule, but if political organizations are going to start tricking themselves out like drag queens and posting rabid, foam-flecked perorations that are to oratory what armpit-solos are to violin concertos, we're going to have a look. And looky here at this spectacular piece of wroth-waxing:

"Resign PROPHET, just resign. Resign before you are thrown out. Or

do you want to go out in some blaze of glory and burn the whole
house down with you? That is more your style isn’t it. Guess
what? There are more surprises coming. Do not even think you are
smart or you can maneuver your way out. You lost. Go. Quit.
Resign. Leave town. Get out. Put Chicago in your rear view
mirror. Or risk suffering the consequences.

Roxy Vanilla"

There was more. There was so much, much, more. But when you read that frothing, fantastic coup-de-grace, you know that Dujan must have fantasized about using it ever since he was a sprout bouncing on his parents' sofa, using a bathmat for a cape. Charming picture, until you realize it's a power-drunk thirtyish blogger aiming it at a 23-year-old former friend.

Hillbuzz's "Roxy Vanilla" stirs up an accusation against the head of the Chicago Young Republicans that had been handled internally, to the evident satisfaction of the original complainant, a year before. What Kevin Dujan does not mention in reheating this leftover is that he has a conflict of interest. In an October 5 post examining the whole mess, one Michael Volpe charges:

While Hillbuzz has been the driving force in raising the profile of this story, its proprietor, Kevin Dujan, failed to disclose a conflict of his own. He was a Hillary Clinton supporter who joined the CYR to help John McCain get elected. He stayed on after the election, but in June of 2009 he was considered for the position of fundraising director. ([!]--ed.)When that position went to another member, Dujan had a very public blow-up and wasn't seen by the group again.

Michael Volpe is a blogger for Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, which would not ordinarily recommend him, to put it delicately, to this scandalously lefty blog. But it's interesting to see a Breitbart writer take on another blogger who has been doing his best to flirt with Breitbart. Given the pounds-per-square-inch of hissy fits, melodramatic outbursts, and passive-aggressiveness in any Hillbuzz post, it's not hard to imagine the reality of the "very public blow-up."

Volpe's article also details the divisions in the CYR that found Dujan parted from his "best bud," which tidbit of course Dujan omits in his breathless pulp-thriller plot.

Just as Snarkopolitan doesn't want to become embroiled in Chicago Republican (or any Republican!) politics, this blog isn't going to pass judgement one way or another on the young man Dujan was so eager to accuse, except to remind all parties to consider this particular source.

But this is not the end of the story. It actually gets crazier.

The crux of the accusation against "the Prophet" is that he either tried to put some cheesy moves on, or attempted to restrain by sitting on the lap of, a young woman who didn't find him compelling, and wanted to leave, which she subsequently did with another woman who'd been there the entire time. But Dujan doesn't give his audience details; he simply calls the encounter, "attempted date rape:"

"Murphy was provided with a copy of the attempted date rape complaint filed against “The Prophet” by a young Chicago woman back in July 2009; Murphy received that complaint while he was still attempting a gubernatorial bid of his own, running with a staff comprised squarely of “The Prophet” and other young, relatively inexperienced 'Romney Guys'”

Date rape? That's horrible. There are obviously ugly political currents underlying this post, but that's a serious charge the writer's passing along there. So the segue seems a little abrupt when in the comments of the same post, the readers are treated to this:

Hillbuzz Says:

July 16, 2010 at 10:40 am
"We will give him this: he is cute. especially when he first wakes up in the morning and is all mussed hair mr. blondy sleepy needs his coffee bear."

WAIT....What?

Oh, jeez. Of course.

After all, this is Hillbuzz! So Harvey Bilk has just published allegations that "the Prophet" may be a rapist, and now, in the comments of that same post, he's calling him "mussed hair mr. blondy sleepy needs his coff---"
blechh blechh blechhh!

Excuse me.

But what is the proper response when somebody tells you:

a. So-and-so should be investigated for committing rape.
b. And I've slept with him! And he is like, so cute!

Harvey's loyal readers have had a little trouble digesting this one, and some couldn't quite fight either the nausea or the cognitive dissonance:

B***** Says:

July 16, 2010 at 10:51 am
"Oh, ICK! What a geek!! Ip, I agree.
If this is the best Old Moneybags can DO, that’s just sad!

The Boyz said he was cute so I was expecting somebody MUCH more studly.
Not in a million years!"

Now fights there within the bosom of Harvey Bilk a battle royal between his Sammy Glickitudinous desire to advance himself, and his preening vanity, which begs that his readers recognize that he does NOT sleep with sad icky "if this is the best old Moneybags can do" unstudliness. No! He sleeps with positively adorable date-raping man-candy, prompting this exchange:

Hillbuzz Says:

July 16, 2010 at 11:01 am
"He is nerdy cute. And a surprisingly good snuggler."

Reply
B***** Says:

July 16, 2010 at 11:13 am
"TMI…TMI…TMI…TMI!!!!!

Boyz, have mercy!
Must…find…brain…bleach"


B***** and other of Harvey's followers are conflicted any old which way; is B***** repelled by the idea that Harvey's called a rapist "cute?" Or is she unable to handle the fairly tame mental image of two men snuggling? Or is it those two men? As Hillbuzz's audience gradually turned from Hillarophiles to Palinophiles, the number of people comfortable with even mild homoerotica undoubtedly dropped. Where she fit in the continuum is hard to say.

In any case, BRAIN BLEACH, STAT!

Boasted friend to women, and boastful lover of their (and some men's, too!) sexual predator, Harvey Bilk is quite a piece of work.

It's not funny that either this man has done what he is accused of, or else he is the innocent target of a Hillbuzz smear campaign. Or that there's a greyish, boozy, furry reality not easily discernible to anyone, even the participants.

As always, Harvey buries his hapless readers in yards and yards of unrelieved block text, in post after post about Chicago Republican politics that this blog is not going to try to dissect. Frankly, except for hoping that there was in fact no date-raping going on, this blog's official position is not to care.

Except to note that the all the raping, closeted, covering-up miscreants seem to be part of that damnable gang of smiley-faced Utah-based mafia, the Mormons, whose bland menace is represented in the Buzz-reviled person of Mitt Romney. Mittens is running, putatively, against the Kwittin' Image herself, former half-Governor Sarah Palin. And that might have everything to do with why Harvey Bilk has pulled the plug on a beautiful, unlikely friendship, one that got the retiring Mr. Bilk a write-up, by name, with picture, half a year before he went thermonuclear at the idea that he had been "outed."

The retiring and anonymous Mr. Bilk might also have forgotten an interview he gave to a magnificently credulous CBS reporter. Bilk happily gave his real name, the name of his virulently nutty online screedatorium, Hillbuzz, and FAN-ta-sized designing a green wardrobe for his inamorata, Sarah Palin.

And by green, he doesn't mean organic bamboo rayon, he really means GREEN. Because dressing like a Lucky Charms logo is sure to quieten the voices of Enviro-fascists who are not in love with the Alaskan Frozen Cheezkake. Excellent job of branding, Harvey.

How could the Palin campaign ever get by without you.

**BONUS!!**

Harvey's "All the Kids Love It When I Read My Hatemail Post turned into a Wordle! (Click through for full-size) "I" "Me" "My!"

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, who says, "Ask me about Tattoine Sarlacs! Go ahead, ask me!"

Trowel Dissection, Part Deux: Kevin Dujan Loves A Good Character

Ya want lies with that, honey?

Oh, Brother! All right, she might exist. A snappy, red-haired, hash-slinging waitress named Shirley, who works in a Chicago diner, orders the customers to finish their vegetables, reads twinks for filth on their unflattering club kid outfits, and still is naively exuberant enough to wave at the television because Kevin Dujan is on it could possibly exist somewhere outside of Mr. Dujan's febrile imagination.

But she bears more than a passing resemblence to every Central Casting stock waitress ever to have slapped an order of Adam and Eve on a raft in front of a hard-boiled dick (tective! Pipe down, back there!) in a film noir since Philip Marlowe first pulled up the collar of his trenchcoat. Only in this case the hard-boiled dick (it's what they're called! All right?) is Kevin Dujan, survivor of nefarious left-wing plots, mercilessly bullied by the Forces of Evyll (the "bullying" coming mostly in the form of snickering. But hey, snickering hurts like fire!)

So far, Harvey Bilk's most enchanting characters have failed to materialize. The most glaring absence was the botched Glenn Beck rally meet-up, where all of Kevin's Brideshead ReRan characters were somehow somewhere else, despite Dujan's customers having paid for each of their rooms and travel: where was Panda? Where Robby? Sebastian Grey?

Eventually, Dujan simply stops talking about Sebastian Grey, whose clever little graphic looks suspiciously like...Kevin Dujan. Who is a "lifelong Democrat" of exactly the same stripe as Kevin Dujan. And, who most tellingly, writes exactly, lengthily, like Kevin Dujan. And who wrote just a couple of posts before disappearing, presumably back to his dashing life as a second-string Evelyn Waugh personage, fretfully plucking at the pills on his acrylic cricket sweater in the back of Dujan's overpopulated imagination, waiting for his next call on the bench next to Ann-Louise Melton in her Eve Arden-smart hopsacking suit, adorable Panda, dear little Niblet, and other characters named after whatever other previously inanimate foodstuffs Dujan found he could turn into Lewis Carroll-like figures (Alice? Pudding! Pudding? Alice! Take away the Pudding!) because his eye fell upon them while in the midst of a creative seizure, whether on his plate, in the pantry, or perhaps waving from the late-night television screen. Anyone for a Patty Melt? Writes exactly like Sebastian Gray, which is to say exactly like our own fabulist Kevin Dujan!

So here we are back at Shirley the snappy waitress, who slings hash with pride, but has a secret sorrow: no, not being a lesbian--this is Boystown! No no, worse: she is a Conservative! A Conservative Lesbian waitress, and just one of a circle of Conservative Lesbians, so thrilled to see Dujan bravely representing the Gay Conservative underclass on the Tube that Shirley stands up and waves at him on the TV like a tweeny-bopper at a Justin Beiber concert.

It seems that Shirley is grateful, because she, as a Republican, is part of an oppressed minority for whose rights Kevin is now bravely fighting: members of the service industry whose employers monitor their right-wing reading matter.

Introducing Eye-Candy Dan, a 23-year-old who walks around Boystown with a copy of George W Bush's biography under his arm, causing the owner of the bar where he works to erupt in fury and, according to Dujan, fire him:

“You aren’t a Republican, are you?”, the owner asked him. “Because you can’t work here if you are a Republican. Your ass is gone if you are Republican”.

(Charming patchwork effect thanks to Googlecache.)

Add Eye-Candy Dan to Scaredy-Cat Craig, the bartender who's afraid to be seen talking to Kevin Dujan, the both of them victimized, like Shirley the Waving Waitress, by relentless persecution from the Lefty Haters of Boystown.

Here I have a personal detail to reveal. A couple of decades ago, I, Mrs. Polly, worked for a gay bar. It was a drag bar in the middle of North Carolina, and after I did Art Deco-esque murals behind the upstairs bar, the owner hired me to be a kind of bouncer for the drag queens' dressing room. I was really sort of like the nanny goat in a stable of thoroughbreds.

I had a simply wonderful time with the DQs, who treated me as a combination living Barbie Head (my unprocessed hair was always good for a few hot-roller experiments), and drag-guardian (their sparkly articles were referred to thusly: "thanks for watching over my drag, honey").

It would of course be wrong to extrapolate the behavior of all bar owners from my couple of years of experience, but I still feel safe in saying that all a bar owner is interested in is employees who will show up reliably and keep their fingers out of the till. My North Carolingian drag-bar employer hired drag queen rednecks (yes!), and would have hired Jesse Helms himself if his physique had been better and he'd been willing to dance in a go-go cage.

So Dujan's fantastic and typically unsupported tale of persecution is even more ludicrous than the usual, though "I will reveal the details if ever "Dan" finds another job" can be added to the list of promises which Harvey Bilk's cult members are not likely to see fulfilled (Pictures of the Glenn Beck Rally, anybody?). A bartender's job is to sell drinks. If he looks hot, he'll sell more drinks (and make better tips), and the bar owner doesn't give a flying fig who the bartender talks to as long as his money's good. Period, Finis.

Surely, some of Harvey Bilk's characters must exist, musn't they? Perhaps so. The trouble is telling which, since we know Harvey's, to be kind, a creative writer. Putting himself at two different Thanksgiving tables to construct the same sad craft-paper turkey is just one example of what multitudes he contains. Or, to be succinct: he's a liar.

We do know, however, that some of Harvey Bilk's, or Kevin Dujan's, characters absolutely exist. Who are they? His victims. His victims, his victims. If he attacks someone, he usually does it by full name and location if he can get hold of it, over and over. His fabrications, tellingly, are always the same: that his supposed antagonists wish him to die of AIDS, even the gay ones, whether live or by email. It's an ugly, ugly, accusation, an ugly, ugly thought, and, after twenty-five years of the world's living with AIDS, curiously behind-the-times. Though bigots may still resort to wishing AIDS upon homosexuals, there is a wealth, sad to say, of (don't bother if you don't have to with this depressing link; it's just for verification) other slurs frequently employed by homophobes in 2010. Teenagers on Facebook, for example?

That every hateful person in contact with Kevin Dujan uses the exact same expression once again points to the fabricated nature of his complaints. It's the work of a lazy fiction writer. It also points to Kevin Dujan's sad, repellent, interior.

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, part of an ever-growing network of post-Dujan blogs left and right. Cheers, kids! What a long strange trip, etc!