Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

jon ralston:

Kissing, telling and rehashing tired metaphors

Of Nazis, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, sex and chickens — just another week trivializing Nevada’s political discourse.

Here’s your Friday Flash of the latest in the elevated discussions in the R-rated (R for Ridiculous) races for governor and U.S. Senate, once again sending the message to the nation that Nevada is populated by knaves and fools:

• I did not have sex with that man, Mr. Gibbons: So it’s two weeks until early voting and a woman accused of being your mistress pens a piece for a Reno newspaper declaring you were a lovesick puppy she rejected. And in so doing, she counts her own lifetime lovers (and yours), lacerates your soon-to-be-ex-wife as a revenge-seeking, publicity-craving witch (with a capital “B”) and insists the only consummation she devoutly wished was to meet the president with you earlier this year.

Kathy Karrasch’s stunning first-person account — all 2,500 words — bubbled into the Nevada political system Thursday morning as a sad and spectacular, believable and yet unbelievable screed.

Read it yourself — here.

It has a patina of verisimilitude, although few will believe Karrasch’s version of events. But the piece will course through the blogosphere and perhaps into the national media. It may have little impact on the governor’s race but it will reinforce Nevada’s image as a place without Appalachian Trails and governors crying for Argentina but as a backwater with roads that should never be taken and where hell’s furies do not stay silent.

• Much more Stalag 13 than “Stalag 17:” If you must use a Nazi metaphor — and I wish both sides of the political spectrum would refrain because of the guaranteed lack of moral equivalency — you would hope it’s more Otto Preminger than Werner Klemperer.

But when it emanates from the long-running sitcom known as Gibbonsworld, you know it will be more like “Hogan’s Heroes.”

Team Gibbons this week resurrected a non-event from Brian Sandoval’s 2002 attorney general campaign, when he inflexibly and ridiculously said he would enforce a hypothetical state law mandating Jews wear a Star of David (because the AG must enforce all state laws, he ludicrously argued).

The money line: “This is the same excuse, ‘just following orders,’ that the Nazi’s (sic) gave when they were asked, by American soldiers, why did they participate in the Nazi plan against the Jews in World War II.”

Sandoval responded with the requisite frothing outrage — “beneath the dignity” of the office of governor … “ridiculous act of desperation.” Even the third man in the race, Mike Montandon, chimed in and assailed Gibbons, who then decided one foolish press release was below his daily quota: “It is unfortunate that in trying to illustrate Sandoval’s lack of commitment to Nevadans the Gibbons’ campaign may have appeared to indicate a lack of respect for the Holocaust, the Jewish faith, or the Jewish people.”

Oy vey. How about a lack of respect for anyone with a triple-digit IQ, no matter his or her religion, with the use of a repulsive analogy that was neither on point nor relevant?

Nothing funny about that.

• Couldn’t we bury the fornicating metaphors at Yucca Mountain? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this week accused the Republicans of “making love” to Wall Street to highlight their putative swooning over financial lobbyists. Then, his D.C. spokesman, Jim Manley, one-upped the senator by saying, “What can I say — it’s true. Republicans are making love to Wall Street, while the people on Main Street are getting screwed.”

The Republicans, always uptight about sex when they are not behind closed doors with their mistresses, wondered about Reid’s obsession with same. And then Reid got, ahem, screwed the next day when Politico reported he had solicited money from a Wall Street company, which prompted this classic from Manley about the request. “Just because they receive an invite, it doesn’t mean they are being solicited.”

The product, no doubt, of too much rhetorical onanism.

• Is the party at KFC? The Democrats announced this week a celebration of the one-month anniversary of Bartergate by crowning a video contest winner. We have had a pun-filled few weeks, Democrats, but at what point do you think you might be beating a dead chicken?

My guess: Nov. 2. (Or is it June 8?)

• A bonfire of the inanities: What happens in Arizona is not going to stay in Arizona, as Nevada’s U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidates scramble to get to the right of one another on illegal immigration.

All have the patter. Mike Montandon has a town hall. And Chad Christensen has a ballot question.

How crazy is it? The most reasonable answers so far have been given by ... Gov. Jim Gibbons.

Now that is funny.

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