U.S. Rep. Steve King accepts criticism with the same unmeasured reaction of a woman who just received an honest answer about her weight.
In a Sioux City Journal column published last week, King, who lives in one of the more conservative and reliably Republican congressional districts, accuses the relatively few people who do actually disagree with him in public of being part of a "left-wing" conspiracy.
Our congressman includes this columnist in such company.
Blasting a column by The Journal's Dave Yoder that challenged him on a number of fronts, King writes:
"He gave credibility to none other than Doug Burns, another liberal columnist who regularly hurls fabrications in my direction."
King adds, "Yoder, Burns and the Des Moines Register have kept their mantra in circulation. Recycling each other's commentary and embellishing each other's distortion of the facts with each printing."
Rather than responding to the substance of the criticism, or accepting that he may not be infallible, that there is not a Book of Steve wedged between Matthew and Mark, King (or his Ann Coulter-ish staff hate-speechwriter) reaches for the easy label, "liberal."
If he weren't given to so many racially loaded quotes one would think King is colorblind as he sees the world in black and white, us and them.
He can't see nuance. And he's so far to the right he can't see the middle.
"A liberal columnist," King says.
The branding just doesn't fit with the almost 10-year history of this "Taking Note" column.
First, this column has been reliably pro-life on the issue of abortion. The "Taking Note" archives include a piece written from the perspective of a fetus begging his teen-age mother to make the right choice. Hardly a liberal view.
In fact, it would get one chased out of a Democratic Party event almost everywhere except Pennsylvania.
Additionally, this column has been used to defend the free market in Carroll with the planned arrival of the Wal-Mart Supecenter and the firm belief that individual business owners, not government, should make decisions about matters such as smoking in the workplace. Both of these points of view are contrary to "liberal" ballot initiatives in other states.
The private-school lobby in Des Moines used a number of my columns to back its defense of vouchers and tax credits and book and busing aid for Catholic schools like Kuemper.
"All politics is local," this column said in February 2002 "If you hail from Detroit, auto issues are key. In other parts of the country where aerospace reigns, thousands of people rely on military contracts. Coal is king in West Virginia. In that spirit people in Carroll, Iowa, should take more than a passing interest in private-school vouchers - which could be one way to get more of our tax dollars back."
A few years later, readers found this headline atop the column: "Kuemper thrives with no help from Vilsack."
Backing vouchers, and attacking a Democratic governor, Tom Vilsack, for placing money for private schools in jeopardy, is sure not liberal.
In October of 2000 this column had the following to say about Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore only weeks before the election: "Al Gore also would make a great washed-up, former all-state high school athlete who now sells insurance in, say, Harlan. Gore could sit around some bar, knock back a few beers and talk about the game he threw for 300 yards. Of course, every time Gore told the story, the yardage would jump from 300 to 350 to 400 yards."
This June the column asked: "Is Chet Culver smart enough to be governor?" We also took Democrat Culver to task for not visiting western Iowa enough, or scheduling debates here, suggesting that "big lug" Culver "sweats and shakes" when his van crosses I-35 heading toward the setting sun.
In the 2004 election cycle "Taking Note" poked fun at the way John Kerry eats, and asked John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, some tough questions.
This column has called for legalizing prostitution, the consideration of decriminalizing the use of some drugs, the televising of executions, leaving people alone who shoot cats, stopping dead in deep footprints the mad dash of the obese to sue McDonald's, building more casinos, opposing any reparations for slavery until descendants of Union soldiers get paid and paying big-time college athletes like the professionals they really are. No liberal candidates called asking for these columns to be used as backgrounders.
"Taking Note" also chronicled the March 2002 afternoon I spent in the West Wing of the White House with my old friend Jim Wilkinson, the then special assistant to President George W. Bush and deputy director of communications for the White House who helped craft Bush's message and manage presidential appearances on matters as serious as the War on Terrorism.
And in just the last year "Taking Note" has given space to the views and biographies of our former conservative Republican congressmen, Jim Ross Lightfoot and Fred Grandy.
"Appreciate the kind words and the fair approach," Lightfoot e-mailed me after I ran a story and column about him and his take on matters like Iraq. "Nice to know there are a few good journalists left in the world that are interested in reporting the news rather than making it. If you are ever in east Texas, you have a place to hang your hat."
In the end, I don't think it's possible to label a collection of columns as varied as "Taking Note," as "liberal" or "conservative." So many of the columns aren't political at all, but rather features on people and businesses.
What I would say is that I'm a "Carroll columnist." I've spent a decade of my life and barrels of ink promoting this city and its people, and writing, based on interviews with thousands of people and a family connection that goes back to 1929 in Carroll, about what I to the best of my ability think will make each day better than the next for Carroll.
It is in that spirit that I have consistently argued that Steve King is bad for Carroll, Iowa.
And you should be awfully troubled by King's effort to use the megaphone he has as a member of Congress to attempt to silence, what are in the grand scheme of things and compared to his national stage and televised platforms, but some words of discontent from a small-town newspaperman.
