Thursday, December 16, 2010

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

Sssserpent in Habitat
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.
Young Republicans Happy Hour

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!

9 comments:

  1. "So Huffpo is crazy?" You could have just pointed to the blogger over there who is having an incestual relationship with his daughter and all the comments defending him and answered with an unequivocal "YES!"

    But I appreciate your efforts to address the question at hand.

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  2. Thanks. I didn't know if you were a Chicagoan and actually cared, but on the off chance...

    Besides, it really gets up my nose that professional journalists just swallow what they're fed all too often. The nonmaterializing "Boyz," for instance. The laughably apoplectic "roxy vanilla." Whistleblowers who just happen to find damaging documents against their sworn political enemies.

    Huffpo actually is just a Rupert Murdoch-model tabloid whose stories are crazy, attracting clicks. And trolls. The Absent-moraled Professor's initial "Wha's the problem?" defenders are now being shellacked, to coin a phrase.

    Isn't anybody interested in Chicago politics? Me neither.

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  3. Thanks for all the behind-the-scenes juicy bits, Mrs. P. As for HuffPo, I can't resist their "Entertainment" section but the stories never live up to their headlines. How disappointing to click on "Winona Ryder's Horrifying Encounter with Young, Drunk Mel Gibson" expecting to be horrified only to find that Winona was once at a party with a gay friend and Mel made a gay joke about her gay friend. If anything could make me feel sympathetic to Mel now that he's down it would be the spectacle of tiny Nonie kicking at him with her little feet while emitting bat-like shrieks.

    Speaking of not being able to resist horrifying spectacles, I had to check in at Hillbuzz to see how Kevin et al handled the DADT repeal. Watching them try to be positive about the repeal while staying negative about the Dems was amusing but I have to hand it to Kev who sailed through this dilemma like he was greased on Astroglide. His talking points:

    * Gays in the military were already openly loud and proud (thereby contradicting his wistful claim that he woulda been a Marine were it not for DADT, but that was so last month ago).

    * The only threat to gay soldiers was from other fellow gay soldiers who were jealous.

    * Just like how Dems keep Mark Kirk and Lindsay Graham in line by blackmailing them about their sexual orientation.

    * So really, the repeal of DADT is a blow against those blackmailing, career-threatening Dems!!

    But poor Bev is obviously verklempt. She wants to be against the repeal because Dems! But ... but .. Dear Leader is for the repeal. What to do? She needs two posts to babble through her tangled thoughts while that little tic beside her eye makes her blink like a Vegas billboard. (Ok, I can't actually see the tic but I know it's there.)

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  4. Mary, watching the remaining Buzzers trying to cling to the lashing tail of their beloved Swamp Serpent is fine entertainment. Now I can't look at Bev's avatar without seeing her tic. She may very well shiver herself to pieces trying to tamp down the cognitive dissonance between Kevin's passionate argument in favor of DADT repeal and his commitment to electing the man so against it that McCain actually argued it would lead to more legless soldiers. "Well son, what happened to you?" "DADT. I lost my leg to DADT!"

    I've brought a visitor with me, btw: another? Anonymous, whom I found wandering around last week's thread, so I've brought Anonymous up here to the coffee-klatch. Say hello, Anonymous!

    Anonymous said...
    For someone who claims to be from NYC and not interested, you sure writlos lot about Chicago Republican politics, and knowledgably, too. So what is the truth?
    December 18, 2010 4:24 PM


    Well, now, that's quite complimentary, Anonymous, and I appreciate it. I am a New Yorker born and bred, but my mother is from Highland Park, Illinois, and has been telling me how much better Chicago was than New York since I was but a fingerling. We went out to visit my grandparents every other year, and the last time I was in Chicago, we went to Marshall Fields and I sat on Santa's lap.

    Thank you for thinking I write knowledgeably, but it was all online research! I left out the really involved details, and whether Brady or Roupas or Gerson runs which organization, I care not a whit. Except to say how sorry I was to discover that this is the wrong Lee Roupas.

    There may be an anti-Gersonian tilt in my piece, but that has to do with my distaste for Dujanian-style hijinks, which she seems to favor: the "so-and-so was overheard calling me a bad name! DIAF, so-and-so!" smear, the too-convenient pearl-clutching over a settled complaint that uses a 23-year-old as a pawn. He may be a louse. He may be a hound. But there is just not enough to Googleburn him, it seems to me, or force him out of politics (he has landed on his feet, it seems, for now, just as a good little wheeler-dealer should).

    I'm a Democrat, and a Liberal. I'm not wild about Rahm, to say the least, but my policies are better represented by him than a Conservative, so I hope he wins the mayoralty, but even so, it's not my town.

    With regard to Romney/Palin, I've done an inadvertent favor to the GOP, or Tea Party, in helping in my little way to show Kevin Dujan to be an untrustworthy nut. We Democrats are praying (some of us still do that!) for Palin to get the Republican nomination. Having an unreliable, embarrassing loon like Dujan in her organization would damage her in all sorts of ways I can't imagine, which would be good from my point of view in the general, not so good in the primaries. But oh well! He's poison to everybody across the board, and my primary focus was trying to find some sort of antidote to him. That's my entire angle. I'm not a journalist, I'm not in political organizations (that goes along with being a Democrat; you can't describe it as an organization), and what I don't know about Chicago politics could fill Lake Michigan.

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  5. MaryRC, what an apt description of Bev, I also won't be able to look at that avatar again without squinting and trying to see the tic.
    I seem to remember Dujan, along with other bloggers like Cynthia Yockey, over at A Conservative Lesbian, lambasting the Dems for "stalling" on the DADT repeal, and claiming it proved they were not really on board with gay rights, that they were only "using" gays for political purposes, yadayadayada. Not sure how he can continue with this narrative, considering that all of eight Republicans, (including the two Senators from Maine, who Dujan likes to refer to as the "weird sisters"), roused themselves to vote "yes" on the measure. I am sure he will think of something, however.

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  6. Hey Mrs. P. Did you see that today Dujan is promoting his column at something called The Social Contract--comparing himself to Ann Coulter and Pamela Geller? I have no idea what that outfit is, but they might appreciate a line for you about his antics.

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  7. Hello there, Mrs P! I got lost typing in "Snookiepolitan" ... oops. Love your Blingee, you do it so very well. Especially the "Planet-of-the-Schmucks"ish one of the Chicago shoreline. All that Illinois slimeball political stuff never interested me, either, still doesn't, really, except for having found myself so inadvertently near a tributary of its' life-sucking whorlhole ...

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  8. Poor ol Kevin, he is still having fantasies about Justin Beiber. His latest give $$$ to Kevin ran to 3000 words. I am not sure if it is working but loony Malkin gave him a plug so he still has some on the lunatic right convinced.

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  9. Nice blog my friend!

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