"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!
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Poor old neglected Snarkopolitan has not entirely gone silent; real life has outstripped any manufactured Internet drama, much less the sporadically continuing Send-Your-Pennies Dreadful over at Harvey Bilk's (aka Kevin Dujan's) Rushbo-approved Hyperverbal Hate Shack and Verbal Vomitorium.
