OPINION: Andy Kim is an Extremist?

ABOVE: Cropped photo of flyer as provided by the author. Full screenshot below.

A letter to the editor by Eric S. Stahl of Delran, NJ

The latest negative flyer to come out of the MacArthur campaign is actually pretty funny. It alleges that NJ 3rd District House Candidate Andy Kim is “too extreme” because he “founded a radical political organization that promoted books authored by Abu-Jamal, Ayers, and a disgraced anti-semite.”

Next to this statement of stunning “Fact” is a picture of the “seditious” Kim. One expects an unshaven guerilla with crossed bandoliers, an AK-47 and perhaps a shoulder-fired missile? Instead, I see a rather benign looking Andy Kim (in black-and-white, of course) with conservative, black-rimmed glasses, looking a lot more like some kind of contemplative intellectual than terrorist.

Oh, that’s right, he is actually an Oxford graduate, a Ph.D., a Rhodes scholar! And didn’t this alleged extremist actually advise two different Presidential administrations on national security? How did Mr. Kim get past the background checks? How was he allowed to place his person in close proximity to the likes of General Petraeus and President Obama? My understanding is that Mr. Kim actually spent quite a lot of time in the Situation Room (the White House one, not the Wolf Blitzer one) discussing conflict resolution in Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

It’s really not worth trying to figure out how many degrees of separation the New Jersey State Republican Committee needed to overcome in order to construct the imaginative “logic” connecting Kim to the various anarchists mentioned in the flyer. But if the Republicans would spend as much time trying to benefit their constituents as they do playing connect the crazy dots and writing misleading negative ads, they might win elections based on genuine majorities and not have to rely on misinformation, voter suppression, gerrymandering, and Russians.

Editor’s note: The opinions in this letter are the author’s only.

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