Monday, November 10, 2008

Dirty Politics

The October 19th Chicago Tribune ran an article in their Perspective section on 10 Things You Might Not Know About DIRTY POLITICS by Mark Jacob. They run these ten Things You Didn't Know columns several times a month and they are always interesting.

And, of course, this being Chicago, who would have any idea about such a thing. "It can't happen here."

Before we forget about the election and all the mudslinging. We were fortunate in Illinois not to be one of those "Battleground" states. Mudslinging and bad talk was all I heard while visiting family in North Carolina the last year. We didn't have much here in the Prairie State.

Anyway, here goes:

1. In Britain, operatives showed up in nursing homes with pre-marked absentee voter ballots in what was called "Granny Farming."

2. At one time, Roman Catholics were considered scary. Al Smith, a Catholic running for US president in 1928, was called a "rum-soaked Romanist." His opponents circulated pictures of New York's Holland Tunnel with captions saying it was the beginning of a tunnel to the Vatican.

3. In the 1946 Georgia primary for governor, Eugene Talmadge appealed to white racists by hiring a look-alike of his opponent to ride around in a limousine with two cigar-puffing blacks in the backseat. It worked, but Talmadge died the night before his inauguration.

More to Come. That Mark Jacob is One Funny Guy. --Cooter

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