POLITICAL MUDSLINGING

My grandfather was always involved in politics in some way or another, and his activity had a profound influence on me. When I got my driver's license, I used to chauffer him around Union County as he canvassed for votes, and later he gave me a job running the sound equipment for the political speakings held by the Democratic Committee in our small county. The most dramatic job he ever gave me was election monitor in a hotly contested city election he was involved in. Then was when I learned that politics was a full-contact sport, as there were all sorts of behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on. Things were so heated that each candidate was given the privilege of putting a monitor in the room where the votes were counted to make sure that the supervisor of elections counted them right. With so many partisan eyes watching the count, you know it had to be right.

I also learned about the anonymous smear sheets that would be circulated in the week leading up to the election. The sheets were usually full of scurrilous lies, but the authors were unknown and the time was too short to mount an effective reply. There was no such thing as Facebook and Twitter back then.

I'm sad to say that the smear sheets are still a feature of politics, but they don't wait until the last minute any more, and they put out much more polished products now. The authors are still anonymous, hiding behind Political Action Committees with high-sounding names which usually include the words "truth" or "fact," something that the sheets are sorely lacking in.

My mailbox has gotten a number of these smear sheets on various candidates, filled with venomous innuendo. And what little fact they contain is so twisted that the truth is unrecognizable. One smear sheet I got the other day had a very poorly photoshopped picture of the target appearing to stand among a group of people whom the authors of the sheet believe to be anathema to North Florida voters. The first thought that came to my mind was "Whoever put this out must think voters around here are too stupid to exercise a little critical judgment." 

It makes me long for the good old days when they waited until the last minute to put out such tripe and distributed it in the dead of night.