I just got off the telephone with Chris Stewart

[pegkerr]

Mr. Chris Stewart was very polite, and we spoke for about ten minutes. He will be releasing a statement later today, which I will include when I receive it.

He said that he is very sorry that the parody website, which was meant simply to be a private joke between five friends who privately blog together, ever made it into the public eye. It was a mistake, but he wishes to take full responsibility for his part. He stated that he had had some good conversations with Tammy Lee in which he had said he appreciated it that she had not succumbed to identity politics, the way that Mr. Fine had--and then he (Mr. Stewart) had been struck by the contrast between that conversation and Tammy Lee's suggestion that liberals were perhaps too eager to make Keith Ellison the first black and Muslim congressman from the Fifth District. That lead to some jokes back and forth between him and this private group of bloggers, which led to the creation of the parody site. It was always meant to be private, just for the five of them, but one of the bloggers, a friend of Mr. Stewart's for twenty years, posted the link elsewhere, where it was seen by about fifty people. From there, Tammy Lee's campaign became aware of it, and they disseminated the link to another 4,000, at which point Mr. Stewart's private blogging group removed the link (although it can still be seen on the mirror site, which I believe Ms. Lee's campaign maintains).

I asked him how much of the content he had been personally responsible for. He said some, in the nature of the jokes passed back and forth between him and his friends, but the website was created with all of their input. He said repeatedly that he had never meant for this to be seen publicly. It was precisely the sort of thing (identity politics) that he had hoped his campaign would avoid. I pointed out the irony to him, that because of this incident, he was now could easily be seen as fomenting the worst sort of identity politics. He admitted ruefully that the irony was not lost on him. I pointed out that I had some questions about whether or not he was the author of the parody site on election day and considered posting my query on several twin cities blogs to try to find out, but I didn't do so, because if it was a dirty trick made to make him look bad, I didn't want to participate in slandering him. He responded that then he wanted to apologize to me personally, and that he was mortified to be in turn perceived to be smearing Tammy Lee or Kathleen Anderson, when in fact the parody site was simply meant to be private between friends.

He has been contacted by many people today, some angry, some disappointed, some supportive, some simply trying to learn more. Some have been calling upon him to resign. He was unhappy and concerned that his wife has been contacted too, including hate messages at her place of work, "and she doesn't have anything to do with this at all." I told him that I certainly wished that the truth had all come out before the election. He said that there wasn't time to do more than simply take the link down, much less generate any response.

I asked him what would he want anyone looking at this mess to understand about him now. He said that he was sorry, that he takes fully responsibility, and that he still wants to serve the kids in our school district and hopes that after answering questions, he will be able to focus on making them his primary concern. I told him that I didn't know whether that would be possible, given how badly he has managed to shoot himself in the foot. I asked what he could do to regain the trust of parents in the school district. He said he hoped to regain trust by working hard for the kids, and by releasing his statement and taking responsibility. He said that he might sit down with a group of bloggers to answer questions and asked whether I would like to be part of the group. I said that I might, and that he should send me further information.

I told him that since I'm a blogger too, I would be repeating the particulars of our conversation on my LiveJournal, and that I would send him the link so that he could satisfy himself that I reported our conversation correctly--but that of course, I cannot control the reaction to this post. I told him that as a writer and blogger, I understand the concept of parody, and the boundaries (private and public) of which one must be aware when putting something out on the Internet.

In short, Mr. Stewart is very contrite about all this.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked at the web site (I believe there's still a mirror extant though); so this is general rather than specific. But, generally, "it was just a joke" is a mighty thin excuse most times it's deployed. So is "it was just intended for friends." Fine, you didn't want us to notice you liked hate-based bigoted humor? Makes sense. But if you do, it's relevant, and I want to know.

I *have* heard of people getting bent out of shape about jokes or private opinions that seemed perfectly reasonable to me sometimes. People draw their lines in different places. I appreciate some levels of black humor that some people don't. I like some kinds of jokes based on geek culture that could be viewed as anti-geek, especially if you didn't know much about geeks.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Sounds like he was directly responsive to the criticisms. That's really about the best we can hope for in our public servants.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

...he (Mr. Stewart) had been struck by the contrast between that conversation and Tammy Lee's suggestion that liberals were perhaps too eager to make Keith Ellison the first black and Muslim congressman from the Fifth District.

That's the side of Tammy Lee that I saw a bit of in my reading; along with that, her real website uses various endorsements that seem to put forth her being female as, in itself, a reason to support her. If I were a black man, I might well have found myself making some pretty pointed jokes, in private among friends.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

... just for the five of them...a friend of Mr. Stewart's ... posted the link elsewhere, where it was seen by about fifty people. From there, Tammy Lee's campaign became aware of it, and they disseminated the link to another 4,000.

In other words, of perhaps the first 4,055 people who saw it, approximately 90% saw it because of Tammy Lee's campaign.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks for following up.

B

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thanks for pursuing this; I was wondering what "the rest of the story" was. Now that you know that he didn't post the thing intentionally, do you still regret voting for him? Just curious, you don't have to respond.

As I said before, I didn't vote for him for other reasons, and now I'm even more glad that I didn't. I believe him completely when he says it was a private joke that was never intended to be made public (because... why? It could only hurt him and the other candidate he was supporting).

But at the very least posting a webpage like that online on an unprotected website shows very dubious judgement. Unless you password-protect it, any webpage can be found by a search engine, after all. And if his "friends" immediately started forwarding the link around, one might also question Stewart's judgement in picking trusted friends. At least one of them is either malicious or not too bright. (As for what it says about his sense of humor - well, that's not too flattering either, but I can imagine a context where it would seem funny. I've laughed at more tasteless things.)

The fact that somebody in the Tammy Lee campaign saw fit to LINK IT TO HER CAMPAIGN WEBPAGE still counts as a Political Dirty Trick, imho. But that couldn't have happened without Stewart's amazing lapses in judgement. Ick. I certainly hope he's contrite.

[rutemple.livejournal.com]

Having blown those boundaries do badly, it's really probably time for him to step down from his public position, and make a public apology, and a private one directly to the people who were smeared.
That's what it means to take the full responsibility and the consequences of one's actions, and it's the kind of lesson I learned as a kid, and expect him to model gracefully to "all the kids" whose lives he wants to impact in any positive kind of way.
Sorry, but that's my wooden nickel opinion today.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

Not a very funny joke, private or not. Shows the caliber of him and his "friends", anyway.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

It's really not very hard to make sure things stay private on-line, and one of the unpleasant requirements of people seeking public office is that they are responsible for their public image to an enormous degree. They all learn that they have to dress the right way, smile the right way, answer difficult questions the right way, behave in particular ways to their spouses if they have them, behave in particular people who are not their spouses but perhaps wish they were.

It's very unpleasant. No one would want that, if there weren't other features that outweighed the discomfort. It is only with great care and vigilance that a public persona can have a private life at all. And they all know that.

Oh, we built this website but we never really intended anyone to see it will not cut it. It's not that I can't understand how someone could do something. It's that I flatly disbelieve that any experienced politician has that much naiveté left in his bones. This is disengenuous in the extreme - and the attempt to make it Tammy Lee's fault ("If she and her supporters hadn't linked to it, no one but the fifty-odd people I didn't mind seeing it would have seen it! The fact that more people saw what I wrote and posted in a publically accessible way is her fault for drawing attention to it, not mine for writing it and posting it," is a specious and cowardly piece of sleight of hand.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was "just a joke". I have no reason to think otherwise, but putting together that web site was an awful lot of work for "just a joke".

Hello

[(Anonymous)]

The problem with the "joke" thing is that the subtance of the joke is utterly in keeping with the substance (and the anger) at the American Hot Sausage site, partial responsibility for which is what we also have discovered about Mr. Stewart. In short, based on that, I simply don’t believe it was “just a joke.”

And we also have discovered that the mild-mannered Mr. Stewart is only half (if that) of the man’s personality.

[(Anonymous)]

And I also agree with the comment that attempting to turn this episode into one of the Lee campaoign engaging in some form of unfair political tactic is simply bizarre. It turns reality upside down. It actually gives me the chills. It defends hatred by accusing people angry about it of hating.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Please take this as completely respecting your autonomy here: This is your LJ, and you have every right to run it as you see fit. However, if you are allowing anonymous comments, I'm going to delete mine.

[(Anonymous)]

Rather than respond?

I've said my piece. I'll leave.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

You know, this doesn't seem any worse than anything that we've posted on the Channel Surfing Wipeout video podcast site, and pretty mild compared to some of the stuff that Chris does on Tek Diff. However, the CSW material is aimed at a pretty wide swath, and I don't think we've ever targeted anyone specficily, so that may be the difference.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I am surprised to see this page linked by Eva Young on the MPLS Issues mailing list. How did that happen?

K.

[mplsvala.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for checking on this. I actually managed to get my stupid computer back on line because I was so bent out of shape about seeing in today's STrib that someone elected to the school board was responsible. The burning question for me is still: Why would he go so far as linking the KKK sites? I still find this disturbing. And he's on the school board.