Besides a sociopath, that is. The answer is Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, speaking at a campaign event yesterday.
“Do you know how many lawyers it takes to grease a combine? Only one but you gotta feed him in real slow.”
According to Kathie Obradovich, the crowd of about 50 people in Boone found this quip funny, along with State Representative Chip Baltimore’s follow-up crack about seeing trial lawyers on combines in the countryside. Obradovich added that in her view, the governor’s joke was “a groaner, not to mention in poor taste.” That’s putting it mildly. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jack Hatch was more in the ballpark when he called Branstad’s comments “offensive and sickening.”
In a statement Hatch said “a governor should be focused on promoting farm safety during harvest and not making offensive jokes that play on the tragedies all too common with farm machinery.”
I’m sure Branstad wouldn’t laugh at any tragedy happening to a “real Iowan.” He just enjoys portraying attorneys as lower life forms.
This lawyer’s daughter is mortified that any public official, let alone the most senior person in state government, would think it’s funny to joke about grinding up people you don’t like. I get it: half the Iowa GOP campaign strategy this year is stirring up cultural resentment against “elitist trial lawyer” Bruce Braley. He supposedly doesn’t represent “Iowa values,” unlike Joni Ernst, the “farm girl” and Sunday school teacher whose husband cracked a joke about trying to murder his ex-wife.
If any Iowa Democratic official or candidate made a self-styled humorous appeal for violence, I’d be the first to call them out. Don’t hold your breath waiting for some Republican to condemn our governor’s sick sense of humor.
1 Comment
Tired of the hatred.
Here it is folks, it is easier to get citizens to vote out of hatred than out of affection. How sad is that?
Full disclosure; I am working next weekend and week nights to make sure Mrs. Ernst loses. My intense dislike motivates me to action. Bruce Braley is fine but I wonder if I would have worked these shifts if say, Jacobs was slated instead of Joni?
Esprit de Corps is working in Spencer Iowa when your guy is 10000 votes down. In Iowa 4 it is all about getting Bruce elected, as Jim Mowrer who is a good man is getting waxed. But yet people show up at the office and are ready to work, how cool is that?
”
“Keep coming back for all they’ve got and take it with a grin
When disappointment trips you up or failure barks your shin;
Keep coming back-and if at last you lose the game of right
Let those who whipped you know at least they, too, have had a fight,
“You’ll find the bread-line hard to buck and fame’s goal far away,
But hit the line and hit it hard across each rushing play;
For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name-
He marks-not that you won or lost-but how you played the game.”
okoboji-mike Tue 21 Oct 9:27 PM