244.5 - Clown Award: Florida Gov. Rick Scott

Clown Award: Florida Gov. Rick Scott

Now for one of our regular features. It's the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

Our runaway winner this week is a man who has proven you can be a crybaby and a bully at the same time: Florida Gov. Rick Scott, or, as we know him around here, Voldemeort.

You may have heard about or even seen the video of a woman launching a tirade against Voldemort at a Starbucks in Gainsville, Florida, berating him for not doing enough to help people and for a failure to create good jobs, a tirade that out clown feebly tried to parry before ducking out.

Cara Jennings, the woman in the video, had nothing to do with it. Someone else took it, someone else posted it. And it went viral, with over 2 million views.

Okay, another viral video, something in a few days, maybe a few more, to be filed away with all the other now-forgotten viral videos.

But that couldn't be allowed: Voldemort had been embarrassed! This affront to his majesty could not go unpunished! Not after he ran home crying!

So a video hit piece on Cara Jennings quickly appeared. The clear result of some quick oppo research, the video says that - gasp! - she has described herself as an anarchist and - gasp GASP! - she refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance oh woe is us!

Gov. Rick Voldemort Scott

It also says that she is a "former government official," which she was, having served on her home town's City Commission for four years - which is admittedly a little odd for an anarchist but the video, creepily enough, uses the term "former government official" as if it was a bad thing that she served in town government.

More to the point, the video calls Jennings a "latte liberal" who is "sitting around coffee shops, demanding public assistance, surfing the Internet, and cursing at customers who come in." Now, Jennings is not on public assistance - although as she later pointed out it should make no difference if she was - she was actually working on a freelance project for the SEIU at the time, and the only target of any impolite language was Voldemort himself, but the real point here is that this video was done by Voldemort's political action committee and was put up on his official YouTube channel. There is no way on Earth - any Earth - that he can claim this was not his doing.

The governor of Florida is using the resources of his political campaign machine to launch a very personal attack on an individual private citizen because she had the temerity to mouth off to him in a Starbucks.

Gov. Rick Voldemort Scott - who, just like his movie namesake, tries to come off as tough and powerful but in the end is revealed to be only a pathetic little clown.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-palm-jennings-update-20160411-story.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/8/1512817/-Rick-Scott-releases-video-ad-attacking-the-woman-who-confronted-him-on-his-job-record-at-Starbucks