IN MASSACHUSETTS, JOHN Kerry cultivated a reputation for unparalleled arrogance when interacting with mere plebes who stood in the way of something he wanted. If a restaurant hostess had the audacity to tell Kerry he would have to wait for a table just like the ordinary shmos milling about the lobby, Kerry would respond with what eventually became his trademark rejoinder: “Do you know who I am?!”
To give Kerry credit, he was (and last time I checked, still is) one of only 100 United States senators. His is an impressive office, even if the people who hold the office aren’t always impressive. You may recall Larry Craig tried to use his similarly exalted status to wriggle his way out of a jam when he tapped his toes in the wrong place in a Minneapolis restroom.
Certain members of the media, though, seem perversely determined to teach the senators what risible self-importance is really all about. The ink-stained wretches are elevating it to an art form.
In an incident widely noted in the conservative blogosphere, Sacramento Bee reporter Bobby Calvan, by his own admission, “bullied” his way into the Green Zone in spite of lacking the proper ID. The fact that the soldiers modified protocol to accommodate a man of Bobby Calvan’s immense importance didn’t mollify Bobby Calvan. Bobby Calvan felt it necessary to memorialize the incident on Bobby Calvan’s blog. In said blog post, Bobby Calvan summed up Bobby Calvan’s heroic behavior during the incident by writing, “When you’ve got nothing to lose, I told my security officer, you do what it takes. He nodded in agreement.” As one would have expected him to; after all, he was learning invaluable life lessons from Bobby Calvan. Blogger the Allahpundit pithily summed up Bobby Calvan’s behavior in-country and his subsequent blog post as “the new gold standard in arrogant media jackassery.”
BUT BOBBY CALVAN suddenly has competition. John Beaudoin is apparently the publisher of something called the Woodbine Twiner, a newspaper that covers some of the goings-on in southwest Iowa. All is not well for the publisher; Beaudoin has a bee in his bonnet because Hillary Clinton has yet to speak with him during her campaign for the presidency. Beaudoin relates the painful details:
Just last week, her Iowa press contact – former Tom Vilsack-for-President-turned-Hillary-Clinton-supporter Stephanie Bjornson asked me to attend an event Hillary was hosting in Carroll.
With my Saturday commitments in Harrison County, I was unable to attend. I was hopeful that phone call could lead to a phone interview with the 2008 Presidential candidate.
It was not to be. I was told Hillary Clinton is simply too busy with her day job to grant me 10 minutes over the phone.
Only one word can capture the essence of Beaudoin’s plight–heart-ache.
Besides, who does this Hillary Clinton person thinks she is, seeking the presidency without first seeking the imprimatur of John Beaudoin? Doesn’t she know that Beaudoin, according to his essay on his Hillary-related frustration, is quite literally one with the voters of Harrison Country? It is a political miracle of the sort that one sees perhaps once in a generation that Hillary Clinton is leading in the Iowa polls even though she’s consistently given the high-hat to the one and only John Beaudoin.
If Beaudoin is serious about landing an interview with Hillary, and by all appearances he is, I respectfully recommend a new approach: Beaudoin should call the Clinton campaign and demand, “Do you know who I am?!” True, that approach seldom worked for John Kerry, but perhaps Beaudoin has the requisite charm and gravitas to pull it off. He is after all the publisher of the Woodbine Twiner.
Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
