We gotta talk, bro.
Pssst. Hey, Kirby. Kirb. Kirb Man. Ahem, Councilman Delauter. Step over here a minute, would you? We have something to talk about.
Look, bro, I get it, I do. You got elected as a Frederick County, Maryland council member. You got your head all jacked up by your tea party constituents who told you that you could be the next Ted Cruz or Sarah Palin (well, a guy version). You hit all the right buttons for your base — you view corporate regulations as “burdensome” and unnecessary, and you apparently hate every form of taxation known to man, to the point where your campaign slogan is “Govern Like a Taxpayer!” All those guys in teabag hats lapped that stuff up, and the mystery boys in the black SUVs who dropped off those entirely legal campaign donations made you feel all gooey inside.* Important. Mover, shaker, on your way to better things. I got that.
But you need to dial it back just a little, buddy. I understand you’ve got the two-prong thing down — proclaim your fierce love for a Constitutional democracy in public and work like crazy to tear it down in private — but you can’t do it quite so openly. I mean, you guys haven’t dismantled Constitutional protections just yet. You’re jumping the gun here, fella.
Using Parking Lot Wrangles as a Metaphor for Jihad
One of those evil Liberal Media types, reporter Bethany Rodgers for the terrorist Frederick [County] News-Post, wrote a scathing article on January 3 savaging all things American, and mentioned you in it. I mean, the article was ostensibly about parking for elected officials and other staffing issues, but you and I both know that Rodgers was really trying to paint you as a fellow traveler with al-Qaeda. I mean, it’s clear from her wording. Look at what she dared write about you!
“Councilman Kirby Delauter, who is also a former commissioner, has joined [Councilman Billy] Shreve in concern over parking for elected officials. … Delauter, R-District 5, has asked [County Executive Jan] Gardner to take parking spaces away from her government affairs liaison and her chief administrative officer and designate them for the council.”
I mean, she might as well have come out and accused you of sharpening machetes for ISIS. The nerve of that woman!
A Withering Response on Facebook
Well, you told her in no uncertain terms what she could do with that fat pile of libelous slander, or slanderous libel, or whatever that was. You took to that 21st-century bastion of liberty, free speech, and telling each other to eat broken glass, Facebook, to give her what for. On January 4, you thundered in your best Charlton-Heston-on-the-mountain Facebook voice:
“Shame on Bethany Rodgers for an unauthorized use of my name and my reference in her article today. She contacted me by phone yesterday, I did not return her call and did not authorize any use of my name or reference in her article.”
I especially like that part about not authorizing the use of your name. Seriously, Kirby, you laid the smackdown on her liberal head. That’s your name, sacred and unalterable and not for anyone to just toss around like a banana in a blender. Speaking of which, I found like fifteen other people with your name on Facebook. You need to get some cease and desist orders in the works. They can’t have your name.** But let’s get back to your post.
“I had let her know after her hit piece during the election where she embellished, twisted and downright lied about what we discussed for that article, that she was to never contact me again since she has absolutely no morals or journalistic ability.”
Boom! Boom goes the dynamite! Big Kirb got after it, insulting both her professionalism and her morals in one blow! That’s some fine Facebook trolling right there, Kirbinator. Have you and I crossed paths on Facebook before? Are you “BigAssaultRifleYouBetcha_45”? I recognize your style.
“Bethany, please understand, when you do a hit piece, you need to know who you’re dealing with.”
I love the implied threat, Kirby. You didn’t actually say you were going to do anything, but I bet she’s already called her jihadist sponsor to upgrade her security system. Put the fear of Kirby in her, bro!
“I have worked very hard to earn an honest reputation in this county. You could have earned my respect, instead you’ve shown that you will sell your soul for the liberal agenda of the FNP.”
FNP … wasn’t that the terrorist group that car-bombed the Dairy Queen in Frederick? Took weeks before you were able to get a Blizzard with chocolate chips again. Those terrorist bastards. Wait, you were talking about her newspaper. My bad. Anyhow, skipping a bit, you concluded:
“So let me be clear……………do not contact me and do not use my name or reference me in an unauthorized form in the future.”
Of course, Jihad Jill wrote you back mewling and whimpering about you being an elected official, therefore giving her the right to write about you without your authorization signed in triplicate, and how she has the “right and responsibility” to report to the people of Frederick County about your doings as an elected official, and how she would be “irresponsible” if she didn’t reach out to you for comment when she published something about the Frederick City Council, and all of that fascist yadda yadda. You certainly weren’t having any of that:
“Use my name again unauthorized, and you’ll be paying for an Attorney [sic]. Your rights stop where mine start [sic]”
Never mind your increasing lack of control of fundamental grammar and punctuation, Kirbmeister. Putting the law on her, absolutely. I mean, you could have just threatened to throw her off of a building, but I understand you don’t want to be repetitive.
Damn that First Amendment!
Unfortunately, not everyone understands your manly assertion of your God-given (if not strictly legally granted) rights. Some foaming liberal law geek named Eugene Volokh wrote for that Soviet propaganda rag the Washington Post:
“Uh, Council Member: In our country, newspapers are actually allowed to write about elected officials (and others) without their permission. It’s an avantgarde experiment, to be sure, but we’ve had some success with it.”
How dare that little Communist piece of … hang on, Councilman, I’m told that Volokh is a conservative legal expert. Really? Man, Kirb, everyone’s a RINO these days.
At least your pal Billy Shreve is on your side. He told a FNP reporter:
“I did not see his post, but I think The News-Post is extremely biased and someone should sue them. … I think media outlets are cowards and they hide behind the label of journalists and that’s a bully pulpit to expand their liberal [agenda].”
All right, Billy! He didn’t read the post and he has no idea what the FNP has done besides be part of the Liberal Media, but by God and Gatling guns, somebody ought to sue their little red britches off! That’s what I call leadership!
Naturally, the Commie who holds the position of County Executive, Jan Gardner (who still needs to make her two assistants find parking in Linganore and let you have their parking spaces — those Humvees need some parking-lot manspreading for sure), had a different take, straight out of the Little Red Book:
“All public officials are really subject to the news and should expect to be written about. Most of us would love to be written about positively all the time, but that’s never the case.”
And the head of the FNP, bombmaker extraordinaire Terry Headlee, had this kind of inflammatory rhetoric in response to your all-American bluster:
“Kirby Delauter can certainly decline to comment on any story. But to threaten to sue a reporter for publishing his name is so ridiculously stupid that I’m speechless. It’s just a pointless, misguided attempt to intimidate and bully the press and shows an astonishing lack of understanding of the role of a public servant.”
Wow, “ridiculously stupid” and “an astonishing lack of understanding of the role of a public servant.” Are you gonna take that kind of abuse, Kirbman? You need to sneak over and pee on his rosebushes or something.
Pwned
It just gets worse. That same FNP printed a traitorous editorial titled, of all things, “Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter.” Yes, they are nervy little Commies, and they pasted you pretty good, bro. They talked about how much they were laughing at you in the editorial room — really, it makes my blood boil, too, believe me — renaming you “The Councilman Formerly Known as Kirby Delauter,” and, worst of all, constructing the editorial so the first letter of each paragraph formed an acrostic of your name. How disrespectful can you get? Wonder if they have rosebushes outside the news building that might profit from a little late-night hydration?
But seriously, that started something. Now everybody, and I do mean everybody, is mocking you like you were Ted Nugent’s pool boy. Those Bolsheviks at NPR had a go at you, sending all their Birkenstock-wearing hippie readership to the FNP to have a good laugh at your expense. Yahoo and those foreigners at the BBC are reprinting the onslaught of Liberal Media Types and their fake-American followers who blasted you on Twitter. Dude, they made you into a hashtag, #KirbyDelauter. (One of my least favorite images from Twitter Storm Kirby is reprinted below. I must have shared it on my own Facebook page five or six times to express my sincere outrage.)
Some jobless stoner even made up a fake Twitter account with your name (seriously, Kirb, you didn’t secure this for yourself?).
Now brace yourself for this one, Kirb my man. You got pwned by Rachel Maddow. Rachel. Maddow. Liberal. Lefty. Commie. Not hetero, even. MSNBC’s resident Trotskyite. Rachel freaking Maddow. She took five minutes from her usual jihadist messaging to turn you into right-wing sushi, my friend. It was not a pleasant experience. (I’ve shared the Maddow clip below. I watched it several times to work up the anger necessary to write this piece, and to be truthful, I’m playing it in the background right now just to keep my blood pressure up. Watch it if you dare. Have a beer first. Or five.)
Backing Out with Dignity
You’re like the hound dog who stuck his nose in a porcupine’s rump, Kirb. Tough to back out and retain your dignity. Your pal Billy tried to pass it off as a big joke, but that didn’t work very well. The problem was, you didn’t come across in your response to Beatnik Bethany like you were joking. You sounded like you wanted to rip her jaw off and use it as a gravy boat. You actually had a fan who did better by you, but she wouldn’t let the media radicals use her name.
“Leave him alone. Let him say what he wants. Everybody has free speech unless you disagree with them.”
She actually hit that one pretty good, using the ideal of free speech to tell everyone to shut up about you. Nice pretzel logic. You should recruit her for your communications staff.
Now, you’ve tried the “nopology,” putting on your big girl pants and taking one for the team. I’ll give you credit for trying:
“The first amendment is alive and well in Frederick County. As a public figure working to maintain and improve the county, it can be very frustrating to feel misrepresented or misinterpreted by a local media outlet.”
Good start, Kirb. You turned it right around and made it Bethany’s fault. You learned something from your unnamed fan, how to paint yourself as a victim, all “misrepresented” and “misinterpreted.” Are you just now figuring that out? I thought you learned that in a course or something.
“Over my career I have fired off my fair share of angry e-mails, which in hindsight I wish I hadn’t. I can’t think of one that had a positive effect. Usually, they only served to escalate the conflict. I thought I had long ago learned the lesson of waiting 24 hours before I hit the send key, but apparently I didn’t learn that lesson as well as I should have.”
See? It was just a matter of timing. Nothing to see here. But here you capitulated pretty hard, bro-in-arms.
“Of course, as I am an elected official, the Frederick News-Post has the right to use my name in any article related to the running of the county — that comes with the job. So yes, my statement to the Frederick News-Post regarding the use of my name was wrong and inappropriate. I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong.”
Wrong? Come on, Kirb. This is Tea Party 101, never admit you’re wrong. Louis Gohmert hasn’t lost a popular election since 2004, and he hasn’t even admitted that the earth isn’t flat. Never admit you’re wrong, especially when you are wrong. It’s a sign of weakness.
Not sure what to tell you to do from here on out, Kirby. Maybe have your picture taken in a soup kitchen or something. Reading to kids, maybe, that shows you’re a big First Amendment supporter. Remember, no matter how much you hate the whole idea of free speech, a free press, and so forth, you can’t give that impression, at least not yet. Give your guys a couple of years to take a blowtorch to that damn Bill of Rights and you can come out of the closet then. But not just yet.
Good luck to you, Kirb. I mean it, man. Brofist. Fight the power. Wait, you are the power, at least a tiny crumb of it. Okay, well, carry on.
* Okay, I don’t really know that guys in black SUVs dropped off big-money checks to your campaign in the middle of the night. That’s called satire. Pesky First Amendment. When you get to Washington, you ought to look into doing something about that.
** I understand there’s a “Michael Tuck” doing some shark fishing in Australia. I probably should get after him to change his name, but anyone who goes into the ocean with a spear gun hunting sharks scares me. I hereby grant him permission to use my name — his name, my name, our name, uh, yeah — for the duration. Or your name. Or whatever name he wants. Come on, Kirby, he’s got a spear gun.
