Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Does that make it an "officially sanctioned" GOP guest column?

Just for the record ...

The guest column from our District 72 state representative Ed Clere that appears today in the Tribune is precisely the same one disbursed as his e-mail newsletter, which arrived to me as being sent by "Indiana House Republicans," which I take as the stamp of party officialdom's approval.

One essay is a guest column, and the other -- exactly the same piece -- implies it is an official party communication. Well, which is it? I'm just curious.

It seems to me that if the local Democratic Party chose to pay attention (Hello? Is there a pulse?), they'd be encouraging the newspaper to give them equal time, given that Rep. Clere's column/GOP communique is obviously partisan.

What was that about a pulse? I suppose it is obscured by the clamor of the local "Democrat" party's persistent McCain/Palin wing, which might also explain a recurring platform deficiency.

Just nod if you can hear me, guys.

7 comments:

SteveK said...

When did you receive the e-mail piece?

Steve

Iamhoosier said...

Seems like I remember Clere stating that he wrote his own columns. Fairly recently.

The New Albanian said...

I don't doubt he wrote it and didn't mean to imply anything about authorship.

What bugs me is that the same article comes to me twice, first as something ostensibly written for the Tribune so as to provide a local view of the legislature, then as an e-mail newsletter coming from "Indiana House Republicans." The tagging of the latter implies that it is an official party document, whether or not that's the case.

I'm more annoyed with local Democrats being spineless about such matters than Ed himself.

And, I know how tempting it has been for me to just submit a column that's lifted word for word from a previous blog entry, but although I've mined the lode for ideas and used snippets, I've either written the columns from scratch or substantially altered ones borrowed from myself.

Probably no one cares about any of this, so I'll stop now, Steve, I forwarded you the mailing. The time stamp is roughly accurate, give or take a hour (i.e., 9:30 am).

Iamhoosier said...

My misinterpretation.

Randy said...

I received my e-mail from the Republican caucus yesterday afternoon.

SteveK said...

Keep hope alive. Have a potential Dem writer reaching out to us this week. Hopefully it works out.

Steve

Bayernfan said...

I've been wondering about this as well. I take another newspaper, from my hometown, and the local congressman there files news releases (not columns) that are not partisan like Mr. Clere's have been. Glad to see that maybe some equal time is forthcoming.