We members of the media often get told that if we're not getting called ugly names, we're not doing it right.
Strangers call us names all the time, often anonymously via internet comments because they're sad trolls.
This reporter was recently called a "tool" by someone angered by her coverage of the St. Pete Pier saga, and a close friend of mine was called an effing c-word (but, like, the real thing) because she wrote a blog post calling for an end to the name-calling over the Pier. (Spoiler: Neither of us are those things. Our dads can vouch for us, then beat up your dads.)
But it takes a special kind of reporter to earn the honor of a wonderful and fantastically creative insult, as Tampa Bay Times political editor Adam Smith did Wednesday, when Congressman and likely Dem. Senate candidate Alan Grayson (or Alan Gray-scale, amirite, GOT fans?) cussed him out over the phone for asking about financial practices that seem to run contrary to the beliefs he espouses.
Smith was asking the oft-cantankerous Grayson, who may run for the Senate seat Marco Rubio is vacating to run for president, about hedge funds he set up in the Cayman Islands, a place rich people set up accounts to avoid taxes.
"Are you fucking kidding? I set up a fund that might solicit foreign investors….I have no present intention of soliciting foreign investors," he said. "Your perception issue is bullshit."
"This is even worse than Grayson's girlfriend might run for congress 18 months from now," referring to a recent Politico story attributed to no named sources. "This is a whole nother level of bullshit….Are are you some kind of shitting robot? You go around shitting on on people?"
This reporter believes there ought to be a Pulitzer Prize category for the reporter on the receiving end of the most creative insult. Smith would certainly be a nominee.
Grayson, meanwhile, may need better handlers if he still plans on running for Senate.
While he's been popular among progressives for championing causes that would benefit the poor and middle class, he'll obviously have to learn not to act like an ass just because someone questions him.
If he does enter the race, he faces a primary against young and mild-mannered Congressman Patrick Murphy, who already has the blessing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Senate's election wing.
Sure, it's not cool for the party to try to push candidates out of primary elections because they don't think they can win in the general (as happened ahead of the special election for the seat of the late Congressman Bill Young, a swing seat in Pinellas). And it's not necessarily effective to brand your candidate as tepid and all about compromising with people who want to set the clock back to 1952 as opposed to bold and passionate about ideas the base finds exciting. (See: Alex Sink, Charlie Crist, Alex Sink again — those elderly undecided Independents never showed, did they?)
So let Grayson be part of the debate, at least for a year or so until he puts his expensive shoe in his mouth one too many times.
We're not saying Congressman Murphy's a centrist who's only exciting because he seems electable (he is the latter—especially if he gets matched up with Congressman Ron DeSantis as his opponent in the general). Democrats are still checking Murphy out, and momentum seems to be slowly building. Earlier today, a little bird told us St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman — a known progressive — is planning on endorsing Murphy kinda soon.*
Murphy's campaign sent out a release Thursday afternoon indicating Kriseman is definitely endorsing him.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2015.