Crossposted from West Virginia Blue.
Carnacki on the counter-attack or
Newspaper attacks Democrat just for considering a Congressional run
The logic of Martinsburg Journal editor Maria Lorensen's latest "Community Fabric" column unravels quickly in her latest: "My two cents: Don't do it, Senator."
Lorensen writes that if state Sen. John Unger decides to run, he'll "get whipped" either in the primary or by Shelley Moore Capito. (There's a clear dominatrix subtheme in Lorensen's writing. The matronly Lorensen uses "whipped" at least four times in this one short column. She's revealing waaaaaay too much of her twisted subconscious in her writing.)
At the top of Lorensen's list of Unger's alleged weaknesses: "He's thin-skinned. He continues to bristle at months-old, even years-old, editorials and columns questioning his decisions."
If you don't live in the Panhandle, you might not know The Journal has always given State Sen. John Unger a raw, unfair deal.
Unger rarely gets credit in The Journal for his often complex efforts in Charleston. That's largely because the paper's "news" staffers are almost always unexperienced and so take their cues from Lorensen and the paper's city editor, Matt "Couldn't Make It As a Lawyer or as a Journalist Anywhere But Martinsburg" Bieniek, who regularly shows off his Republican bias in a column he writes.
In the most recent election cycle, The Journal took pains to highlight Unger's Don Blankenship-funded opponent at every turn. Just to give one example, weeks before the election, the paper put a front-page color photo of Unger's smiling opponent flipping pancakes at a Kiwanis breakfast along with more coverage and another picture inside. There's no nod to even an effort to cover Democratic candidates evenhandedly.
Unger clearly can't get decent coverage from the only daily newspaper located in the Panhandle -- an area that where there's no television news coverage either -- but because he's called Lorensen on her paper's bias, he's "thin-skinned."
I wonder if she would like it if people were less than fair to her. Like maybe if I said something like, "The black-and-white photo with her column doesn't quite capture the leathery handbag look of her overly tanned face."
(Her shots against Unger are not only unfair, they are untrue where as the description of Lorensen is at least accurate.) Remember, by her rules, if she complains about the characterization of her by this blog, she's "thin-skinned."
And in the very column in which she characterizes Unger as thin-skinned, she doesn't give him a fair shake. She mentions, for instance, that he walked across his district to get attention during his first run for office. "Walking across the district might make for good newspaper copy, but it doesn't necessarily cause folks to empty their pockets."
Most anybody could walk across a district ... I think a fair person might have highlighted that fact that Unger has some attributes that few candidates could match: He's a Rhodes Scholar who once worked with Mother Teresa. He was embedded with U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2003 to begin humanitarian relief work immediately after the invasion. (In Lorensen's book, she criticizes Unger for doing that even though the state legislature was not in session when he was gone.)
Considering Lorensen has never once mentioned that Republican Rep. Shelley Moore "Stay the Course" Capito's only qualification for office is she was related to the federally convicted Gov. Arch Moore it's not surprising that Lorensen does not want to point out how much better qualified Unger is.
Neither does Lorensen mention that Unger won his district with 65 percent of the vote in Berkeley County and 67 percent of the vote in Jefferson County despite all the money Blankenship spent and all the biased press coverage from Lorensen's "news"paper.
Lorensen also writes that an election campaign would distract Unger from representing his district. By her deeply flawed logic, Capito should avoid running for re-election since the campaign would distract her from representing WV-02.
And while Lorensen quotes approvingly of Hoppy Kercheval's recent column calling Unger "hard-headed" and "preachy," she completely ignores the thrust of Kercheval's column.
Unger is an intriguing choice by the DCCC. The three-term senator has always been somewhat of a misfit within the state party structure. He's frequently a thorn in side of state Senate leaders who prefer team players to independent voices.
He's earnest, but occasionally preachy. He's hard-working, but can also be hard-headed.
Unger happens to be dangerous politically because he's not afraid to lose. He can run and get beat by Capito, but still hold his state Senate seat since he'll be in the middle of his four-year term.
In 1998 Unger, then 28, came out of nowhere to upset incumbent state Sen. Harry Dugan in the 16th District. Unger believes a convergence of circumstances brought him to that race, and ultimately to victory.
When he talks about the `08 Congressional race, he again sees a convergence of signs and conditions.
Lorensen partially steals from Kercheval yet misses his point completely, probably intentionally since she's never let facts get in the way of her attacks on Unger.
(Indeed, in her pretense of being a political pundit, she refers to the DCCC as the D Triple C -- yet she does not know any of the basic problems of the Mike Callaghan campaign. Her "D Triple C" wording reveals what a poseur she is when she writes about politics.)
Buried in the hubris of Lorensen's column is what's likely at the root of her latest rant against John Unger -- "One of The Journal's reporters is going to work for him. She tells me she's headed to Washington for training."
Lorensen is in full-blown hissy-fit because she couldn't convince the reporter to give Unger the brushoff and continue toiling for her instead.
She's pissed that Unger won't listen to her smarmy, preachy lectures either -- "As we've said editorially a number of times, he should focus on being a state senator for the Eastern Panhandle" -- and insists instead on thinking about a run at Congress.
And she's probably more than a bit jealous. I mean, here's Unger, a decade younger and considerably smarter, and he's perhaps off to Washington to think big thoughts and solve world problems.
She, meanwhile, works on her tan and steers the The Journal, a newspaper best known for its embarrassing typos and spelling errors than it is for breaking stories (we scoop The Journal often here as volunteers at West Virginia Blue).
When a Republican hack like Lorensen attacks Unger this early, you know the Republicans are worried that Unger can beat Capito.
To let The Journal know how you feel about Lorensen's column call Journal Junction at 304-263-3381 ext. 333.