Gary Ackerman Can’t Take A Joke

So this morning I’m completely out of material to write about. It’s been a long week, I’ve got a lot more college football on the brain than politics, I’ve got a million things going on at Castle MacAoidh to handle and we’ve got the most boring statewide election cycle coming up in Louisiana in modern memory, which isn’t good for the drumming up of blog-fodder.

Which means I’m basically spent for the week. And then I get the best gift a blogger could possibly get.

What was it? The Federal Bureau of Investigation, who dropped in on my doorstep.

It seems that the piece we did on Monday about Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Carnation), the boutonniered New York congresscritter, and his smarmy, PETA-friendly critiques of Rep. Jeff Landry’s fundraising tactics ruffled some feathers inside the Beltway.

At issue was an event Landry did last Friday, in which folks paid $5,000 to get a tag to hunt alligators near the Congressman’s camp. Which is legal in Louisiana, the post explained, and quite desirable, since alligators breed like rabbits and can be a nuisance to livestock, pets and things like crawfish traps and even children in the wrong circumstances. But Ackerman took umbrage enough at Landry’s idea to put out a statement demonstrating his moral superiority on the subject…

“$5,000 to kill a reptile? Heck, for a mere 10 percent of that, you can send me $500 and you don’t have to kill an alligator,” Ackerman wrote in a message to supporters. “Don’t have 500 bucks, or can’t find an alligator in New York? Well just don’t shoot a squirrel and send me $50.”

We thought that was a laughably typical statement from a New York lefty, particularly one with a long pattern of unserious, pompous grandstanding on issues like energy, animal rights and other limousine-liberal hot buttons. So I decided to tweak him a little and play to his degrading view of Louisianans by jokingly suggesting that for his next fundraiser Landry ought to fly donors up to New York and hunt popinjay politicians…

So if Landry wants to give his campaign donors a shot at playing Junior and Willie, we’re less than concerned. It might be an even bigger ticket if his next fundraiser involved a a plane trip to the Big Apple and a chance to shoot Ackerman.

After all, considering that Ackerman hasn’t garnered less than 63 percent of the vote in any election since 1996, carnation-boutonniered-sissies like him appear to be in as plentiful supply in New York as gators are in south Louisiana.

Oh, he didn’t like that.

The poor guy from the FBI was almost apologetic about being sent to see me. Once he was satisfied that he wasn’t dealing with the next Lee Harvey Oswald, we actually spent more time talking about LSU’s defense and how awesome they looked last night (guy was a huge Tiger fan just like I am) than the “threats” made against Ackerman – who he suggested was behind the visit. The Gabby Giffords incident was brought up and he left me with an admonition to please not make him waste his time coming out again.

Read the whole post and you can tell that reference to Ackerman-hunts was clearly a joke. I have no interest in shooting Ackerman – first of all, as much as I like Landry I’m not donating five grand to his campaign any time soon, which was the joking suggestion in the post, and second I find him far more useful as an object of ridicule than a martyr for the Left. So his personal safety is in no danger from The Hayride; only his reputation and his delicate feelings are under threat from this quarter.

I found this morning’s visit entertaining – or at least, as entertaining as having the FBI knock on your door can be. But it certainly does appear peculiar that it should have happened this week, when the Obama camp debuted the ludicrous AttackWatch website in an attempt to intimidate its critics.

This after Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., made national headlines by suggesting that union Democrats and others “take those sonofabitches out” in reference to the Tea Party – naturally, if someone sent the FBI to Hoffa’s door and they decided to have a look at his activity his overheated rhetoric would probably be the least thing they’d be interested in. And of course, since the Tucson massacre and the “new tone” we’re supposed to have in talking politics in this country Hoffa is hardly the only lefty using violent references to discuss political opponents. If Ackerman or other Democrats are working on tamping that rhetoric down through the use of G-men, I haven’t heard much about it.

So, let’s reiterate. Congressman Ackerman, or whichever one of your cowardly fascist staffers decided to pull the string on this ridiculous attempt at suppression of free speech, nobody is coming from Louisiana to shoot you. But we’ll happily ridicule every move you make from now until your constituents finally wise up and send you to the full-time MSNBC gig with Ed Schultz or Al Sharpton as a lead-in you so richly deserve.

Have a nice weekend, Gary. Geaux Tigers.