when it rains it hails: portrait of a mudslinger

i've been seeing a lot of comments online about what a clean race eric dickerson has been running. of course, this couldn't be further from the truth. the dickerson campaign has been remarkably filthy, but dickerson has done a slightly better job than julia carson of hiding behind his surrogates.

i've blogged previously about how someone called "someonewhowouldknow" used to regularly post anti-julia pro-dickerson comments on TDW, until TDW mentioned to dickerson that the comments were traceable back to his buick dealership, at which point the flood of comments mysteriously stopped. today i will discuss someone else connected to the dickerson campaign who regularly posts outlandish diatribes against julia carson, stuff even worse than what gary welsh at advance indiana has been spewing: a blogger who calls himself sir hailstone.

hailstone is a regular commenter at AI and other right-wing blogs, so i was well familiar with his rhetoric, which is so over-the-top that i never took him seriously. i just assumed he was a random right-winger, but the other day, i was scanning through google blog search and discovered that he is in fact a volunteer for the dickerson campaign.

julia haters love to talk smack about wilson allen, a long-time carson associate and current volunteer for her campaign who comments here and at other blogs using the handle Wilson46201. they delight in calling him julia's chief dirt-digger and other names, and accuse him of committing all sorts of voter fraud. i've never met wilson, so i can't vouch for his character IRL, but comparing online personas, wilson is an absolute saint compared to hailstone, whose loathing of julia carson (and democrats in general) seemingly knows no bounds.

(hailstone's pet name for wilson is tokyo rose, a two-pronged slur that not only suggests wilson is treasonous but also mocks his masculinity. (wilson is openly gay.) he also routinely says things to wilson like this: "Go get a shower you smell of dumpsters Tokyo Rose. You been diving in them again looking for a good meal, or are you sleeping in one these days?")

hailstone proudly confesses to being a dickerson volunteer on free republic, one of the most rabid right-wing sites on the net. (curiously, he never mentions it on his own blog.) in the FR post, he also calls julia an "ultra-extreme-liberal", claims she supports "allowing full term babies that were supposed to be aborted, to die after birth", and ends his post by saying "She must be neutralized! We CANNOT let the liberals take charge."

but my favorite part of the post is what he has to say about advance indiana: AI "is a pro-gay site but if you can hold your nose past the gay rhetoric he is very much an Eric Dickerson supporter". i get the feeling that, come wednesday, hailstone isn't going to be popping up on AI's comment threads quite so often.

let's take a look at some of the greatest hits from sir hailstone's blog:

here he uses guilt by association to call julia a "socialist", ending his post with "Lenin would be so proud of Julia Carson." in extra-large letters for extra emphasis.

here he posts a ridiculous graphic suggesting that if democrats take over congress, the terrorists will win... and kill all americans.

here he complains that julia got campaign contributions from "corrupt labor unions" as well as "$4100 from the gays".

i don't even know what to say about this post other than to point out that he gleefully and uncritically reprints an anonymous letter from someone who says "Most Jews in Indianapolis are not real Jews." i'm not sure what makes one a "real jew"... presumably voting republican does.

here he talks of getting together with police to tail and photograph democratic voter vans (GOTV vans that drive people without cars, especially senior citizens, to the polls). he concludes, "With Voter ID it'll keep a lot of these old time Dem shenanigans to a minimum but you never know what them sneaky bastards have up their sleeve."

here he claims that the only reason julia won the past five elections is "because the dead voters come to life." (not the first time he made that claim.)

here he refers to jen wagner as "The dumb bitch that runs TDW". (in another post, he says to jen, "based upon your photo posted at HPR, looking at your face is downright painful!")

here he asks "how many Dems are out there with NAMBLA membership cards tucked away in their wallets?"

he also loves to sling mud at democratic sheriff frank anderson. he gets extra irony points for this remark: "How does a car dealer consider himself qualified to provide meals to inmates?? File that under "W" for WHAT THE F***?!?!" (eric dickerson, of course, is best known for being a buick dealer. apparently car dealers aren't qualified to prepare food, but they are qualified for congress.)

here he eagerly reprints a screed from certifiable wingnut jocelyn-tandy adande (who i've blogged about before) that's full of allegations of ballot box stuffing and other illegalities.

here he posts a ridiculous graphic suggesting that melina kennedy is a communist.

sound like a mudslinger to you? these are just highlights; his entire blog is like that. and these are only selections from his own blog! i didn't even bother to start rifling through all the comments he's left at other blogs like AI. he's surely posted stuff that's equally if not more outlandish on other blogs; i just don't have the time tonight to go looking.

note to the dickerson campaign: if you're going to try to claim the moral high ground and insist that you're running a clean campaign, you might want to keep a close eye on what your campaign staff is saying on your behalf on the blogs. or, at least, make sure they aren't traceable back to your campaign. i thought you had learned that lesson already, but apparently not.

update 11/08/06: predictably, on the day after dickerson lost the election, hailstone has effectively taken down his blog, leaving only one entry, a new one whining that we are now doomed to eternal torment because of democratic electoral victories. you can still see some of the old blog in the google cache, but much of the older material seems to be lost to the ether. natually, none of the links above work anymore.¶