"New Voices," old tricks...

Verifying the old adage that "opinions are like assholes, and everybody's got one" -- ALSO a Salt N Pepa lyric! -- the Orlando Sentinel published and asshole opinion piece this weekend called "The health-care debate deserves and honest forum" under the auspices of its "New Voices" demographic olive branch: "a forum for readers under 30." Sure, fine, this is where young upstarts are meant to bloviate for 600 words or so about current events that they typically have no control over, because, well, their hair isn't graying yet. It's a harmless bit of Weekly Reader-dom designed to assuage a certain segment of the ad-perusing public and give "power" to the "kids." Harmless.
The problem with this Sept. 5 piece, located on page A19, was that it didn't really appear out of the thin air of youthful concern, but rather out of the the typing fingers of a known Republican operative, Kristen Soltis. Soltis -- as it is partially pointed out in print, but not online -- is the director of policy research for the conservative Winston Group in Washington D.C., and also former intern for the National Republican Congressional Committee who has been known to blog. Sure, she came up in these parts -- "I was born and raised in Orlando, graduated from Cypress Creek High School and the University of Florida, and moved to the nation's capital after college," she writes, "... to see how policy is made and change, implemented" -- but even from D.C. she feels herself qualified to comment on the nasty Democrat-"stacked" health-care town hall held by U.S. Rep Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, last month at that grimy union hall. Health care reform is bad! Democrats are evil! She wasn't there. She isn't even a registered voter in Orange County. She is, therefore, a young expert.
Also, she is paid to do things just like this: paper-airplane in rhetoric to editorial boards in hopes that they don't hit up the Google. It worked.
Orlando Democratic state rep., Scott Randolph, fired off a missive to the Sentinel on Saturday pointing this out. "After attending three health care town hall meetings with Alan Grayson, I am growing very weary of these attacks, and unfortunately, this paper just allowed itself to be fooled," he wrote. "This person is nothing more than a paid staffer to write to papers around the country and complain about town halls."
So, while stumping for a "new way of doing business" in her "New Voices" piece, Soltis is effectively dog-earing the playbook of the old guard. If she -- and the violently shaking heads of Republican discontent -- don't have their way, Grayson's gonna git it!
"If he won't listen to his constituents now," she writes, "you can bet that voters will make sure he hears them in November 2010."
Attn. all politicians: political ads are now free at the Sentinel!

Posted by billymanes on 9/8/2009 11:37:17 AM Permalink | Comments: 1

Comments on this story:

Anonymous said:
Nice to see that a bunch of carpetbaggers at the Weekly get to determine who is a “true” local and who is not. I routinely see letters and op-eds from Orange County Democratic Executive Committee members published in the Sentinel as “random guy on the street” pieces all the time, and they don’t even disclose their affiliation, so spare me your manufactured scorn. At least this girl was intellectually honest. You, Scott Randolph and Alan Grayson are not. FYI, I’m a local, not paid to write us, and as someone who knows both Grayson and Randolph, they’re lying about Grayson’s town halls. He did stack the audience with sycophants, and he does not listen to his constituents. Grayson looks down on his voters like their an invconvience, not his main concern. Finally, I don’t Soltis, but it’s clear she was raised in central Florida and lived here. That’s more than can be said of Alan Grayson (D-Bronx, ACORN, 90% Stock Loan scam.)
posted on: 9/17/2009 9:30:06 PM