There is an eighty-eight year old man here in Mount Vernon who has been trying to keep a sign for Jim Webb up in a tree behind his house. His name is Wendel Allen. He moved to NOVA in 1941 to work for the Secret Service where he spent his career. He's now retired. He was a delegate to the State Republican Convention for George Allen when he ran for Governor (which would be 1993).His house is located about one mile from George Allen's house. His home backs up to a major road - Mount Vernon Memorial Highway. He's become very unhappy with George Allen, drove to Webb Headquarters in Arlington and got a small yard sign which he put in a tree.
That sign was ripped down 2x.
He got in touch with a local Democratic Committee (he's not an involved activist) who got him a 4X4 sign which was glued on plywood to minimize the possibility of vandalism. He put that up in a tree and it was ripped down about 2 nights later by men with a truck and ladders.
He then put a 4th sign up and put Xmas Lights and a spotlight on it. 2 days later VDOT came out to take it down until the police intervened. There are 2 4X8 George Allen signs on US 1 in right of ways in Mount Vernon that VDOT has not touched. He worked out a compromise with VDOT who said he could keep it up so long as he removed in Christmas lights and spotlight. The local paper followed up with a story here.It was stolen again this morning sometime after 1 AM. He views it political intimidation.
This man is not a hard core Democratic political activist. He voted in the Republican primary in 1998, 1996, and 1989. He voted in a 1993 Democratic Primary. I do not really know his politics generally, I just know that he's never been involved on the Democratic side and he's not happy with George Allen. It is astonishing that people will not let an eight-eight year old man who has served his country express his views.
P.S. In addition, I am told, "Someone drew a penis on Jim Webb's name with a grease pencil earlier this week, but he got it cleaned off."
Lowell Feld is Netroots Coordinator for the Jim Webb for US Senate Campaign. The ideas expressed here belong to Lowell Feld alone, and do not represent those of Jim Webb, his advisors, staff, or supporters.
When you love a candidate like that, it's obvious what your own personality is going to be like.
And now something else clicks into place. I have Jennifer's Allen's "other" book on order. It's called "Better Get Your Angel On" and in 5th Quarter she jokes about a review from the Times of London that called it "obscene in every sense of the word."
Amazon.com has a short review from Publisher's Weekly about the book, which I will reprint here. You can draw your own conclusions from it, especially the one fragment quoted:
From Publishers WeeklyWritten in a variety of insistent, arresting voices that hurtle the reader through glimpses of hedonistic, drug-speeded-up lives, some of the 13 very short stories in this debut collection succeed on their technical brilliance and shock value. Too many of them, however, are mannered and pretentious, studded with artifice and obsessed with alienation.
Allen's stage set is a California strident with Day-Glo colors, slick with plastic values, vibrating with the menace of violence. Her characters are people you would never want to meet, in situations that reek with sleaze. Each of these short takes from the fast-lane begins with an attack sentence, the hallmark of Allen's mentor, Gordon Lish. A few of these slices of life are perfectly pitched and constructed, such as "The Generals," wherein the wife of an accident-prone football player reveals the cause of his incorrigible clumsiness, or "The Burnt," in which the pace is as frantic as fire. But too many others are deliberately outrageous.
The opening sentence of "1987" reads:". . . I am watching a man who has blood on his face that looks to me like the blood is coming out of his eye give one, two, three kicks to the stomach of a woman who is on her knees in a puddle of sand. . . ."
While Allen is a generously talented writer, one wishes her precocity had been shaped to better ends.
I wonder how Wadhams and LaCivita would assess this book's literary value.
I suggest a stakeout.
that will make great headlines for allen.
I am dead serious too, do it today!
"Allen supporters destroy 88-year old man's Webb signs"
Do it. Those in Mount Vernon. This is your turf, are you going to stand for this?
Well, I know Allen's people are d-bags, but this is pretty bad. He might as well stuff something in the guys mailbox.
If they hate Democrats this much in a campaign, I shudder to think what Allen would do if he returned to office.
Also, the WaPo is considering doing a story, I'm told.
Of course, our local press had to get BOTH sides of the story. (Fair and balanced). A local Republican precinct captain first told the reporter that "sign stealing hadn't been a problem this year." He later called back and said he was wrong, it was a horrible problem, etc. etc. I guess he got his orders to change his story.
Freedom isn't free. Isn't that what they say? So far it has cost (I'm guessing) over $200--which makes it a felony, btw.
#2. This sign would have been seen by Allen and Ed Gillespie and all the other powerful right-wingers who live in this neighborhood as they come home from points north. Well, they could have taken a more curcuitous route home, of course, but this particular road is the quickest way home.
#3. A unapologetic Allen supporter in the neighborhood is the one who made the complaint about the lighted sign being a distraction. Apparently, others have as well (according to VDOT). There is a formal FOIA request in the works to see who these people were.
#4. The lights were a distraction? Does that mean we have to give up Christmas lights? The gentleman's son told VDOT the sign would be stolen if they made him take the lights down. VDOT didn't believe him. And they didn't care, either. Well, they were wrong and the son was right.
#5. I don't believe it was the WEBB sign that has these people in such an uproar, but the small sign above it that the gentleman's son had made. It reads, "pro-Allen thugs stole this sign THREE TIMES from this location." (guess he'll have to edit it to read FOUR TIMES.) Good news: the thugs couldn't reach this sign and IT STILL REMAINS.
#6. We're getting this gentleman another sign. And steps will be taken to ensure it STAYS UP.