Quite the smarmy little headline out of the Binkley-owned Anchorage Daily News last week:
“Republicans nominate 3 men to fill vacant Alaska Senate seat”
The article, written by James Brooks, who best I can find out is not a formal member of the state democrat party leadership, was about three people nominated to replace sadly departed State Senator Chris Birch. The nominees were current Anchorage School Board and former State Senator Dave Donley, former state house and Anchorage Assembly candidate Al Fogle and current Rep. Laddie Shaw.
Why the concentration on the sex of the nominees, I wonder? Is the ADN setting up yet more #MeToo shenanigans, something democrat “Poison” Ivy Spohnholz blew up nicely with false allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by Board of Fish nominee Karl Johnstone last April, perhaps?
Of course, women did apply for the position. One of them was Chris Birch’s daughter. Has her name been forwarded as a nominee, I expect the headline would have been:
Republicans embrace nepotism with nomination of deceased Senator’s daughter
You can’t win with these guys. Still, they could have done worse. For example:
Republicans nominate 3 angry white men to fill vacant Alaska Senate seat
Republicans nominate 3 Trump supporters to fill vacant Alaska Senate seat
My experience has been that the first one who starts dividing people based on race, sex, or other defining characteristic is the racist, sexist, the bigot, kind of a variation of Godwin’s Law of online arguments. Happily, the ADN headline writer just self-identified and tarred his paper with the very thing he is trying to tar the Republicans with. Who knew it would have been this easy:
What could they have done instead? If the writer was more than just another democrat operative with a byline, the headline could have been any of the following:
Republicans embrace diversity with 3 nominations to fill vacant Alaska Senate seat
Ages of the 3 range from late 30s to over 70.
Republicans embrace military experience with 3 nominations to fill vacant Alaska Senate seat
Two of the nominees are combat veterans. The third is a former volunteer fire fighter.
But when you are trying defeat all Republicans, there is no smear too big or too small, is it? Sadly, with the ADN, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
