You Say Cafare-o, I Say Cafaro

. . . but unfortunately, we can't call the whole thing off.

I try to keep discussion here at the Akron Pages fairly high-toned. It's not that I don't engage in sheer tirades -- my real-life friends could disabuse you of that. And it's certainly not because I am at my core a nice person who hates meanness (like, say, Jill). At my core I'm pretty much a bastard, I just filter it well most of the time.

The tone here is primarily the effect of my boredom with blogs that are pure rant. I wanted something more substantive. That's what you find on the blogs I roll and it's what I try to deliver here.

But certain topics bring out the worst in me. Some things I can barely discuss without slipping in to profanity-laced invective and little more. Call it my "Don't Get Me Started" list. It includes:

-The New York Yankees
-Microsoft Word
-The Ford Expedition
-Going Dark in August
-Carlos Boozer
-9/11 Conspiracy Theorists, HIV Skeptics and Other Lefty Loonies
-The Service at the Kinko's on Exchange
-Casey Blake's Batting Average in the Clutch
-People Who Think Fox News Really Is Fair and Balanced

To this list (only sampled above) we must regrettably add Capri Cafaro Running in Ohio-13. It's beyond a rational disagreement -- this campaign simply vexes me no end.

So the tone in the Cafaro discussion has, shall we say, dropped a few levels, both in my observations and in the comments. It plummeted in this post, and only came up a little in this one. It's bad enough that other blogs have noted it and Cafaro fans have flamed me. (Though it should be noted that the first one was apparently Saving Ohio from Arlington, Virginia. Thanks for helping out, dude.)

Let me make a couple of things clear. First off, my ire isn't about the young lady herself, it's about this campaign. It's easy to hate the pretty rich girl for being pretty and rich, just as it's easy to like the pretty rich girl for being pretty and rich. Those are opposite sides of the same low-denomination coin. I've really tried to avoid that.

Cafaro herself is obviously intelligent -- Jill's misgivings about her child prodigy narrative aside, Stanford undergrad/Georgetown grad school doesn't spell "dummy." She's obviously industrious. And she's appears to genuinely live her social conscience. Given the magnitude of her jack, she could be doing the vapid socialite thing, or she could be doing something more about making money and less about making things better.

Furthermore, I have yet to hear a policy position with which I strongly disagree. I'm guessing her stance on trade is different than mine, but we probably agree on the issues 90-95% of the time.

I just don't like this campaign. I might not mind if, post-1994, she set up shop here in NEO, then moved into the 13th when the seat opened. Instead, she immediately heads off to New York for a year and change, and only comes back here to run. She had a house in the 14th, purchased, it appears, for that run, and now has apparently opened up the trust fund to buy in the 13th.

It seems so cravenly cynical that, even if it isn't, she is the only Democrat running who would be truly vulnerable in the general. She will either buy the nomination and struggle in the general or she will lose in the primary, but only after forcing her opponents to spend heavily to defeat her.

Can someone tell me why this is a good idea? Can someone please explain why she is so fantabulously better than Betty Sutton on anything that it's worth burning through hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to Dems -- contributions you may have noticed that aren't exactly in overfuckingabundence? Can someone show me one goddam scenario in which the Dems lose this seat other than Cafaro's money getting her the nomination and her biography pissing off enough independents and Dems to lose the general? Can somebody explain how she is so fucking great as to be worth that risk? WHAT! THE! FUCK!?!?!?!??!!?

*breathe*
*breathe*
*breathe*

OK. We'll get that tone back under control eventually.

In the meantime, a few guidelines for myself and my commenters. We will not denigrate Cafaro's intellect or accomplishments. We will not gleefully note the proximity of her name to insults generally hurled by misogynists. I think snide remarks about her father's business (and, erm, conviction) skirt the line and would rather not see them here. I simply want to beat the drum that a person who wishes to represent Ohio in Congress ought to care enough about the place to live here as an adult.

On the other side, Cafarofan can comment until blue in the virtual face about how wonderful she is on labor issues, but until you can explain to me why I should vote for a person who wants to call herself my Representative without first calling herself my neighbor, you just won't persuade me.