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Senator Alan Simpson

I have a family member who once wrote a blog post critical of Simpson and Simpson actually tracked him down to complain about it!
It always struck me as kinda weird that a US Senator would expend that kind of effort pushing back against a small-time blog post.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
I have a family member who once wrote a blog post critical of Simpson and Simpson actually tracked him down to complain about it!
It always struck me as kinda weird that a US Senator would expend that kind of effort pushing back against a small-time blog post.
Click to expand...
Some senators used to hire people just to read their hometown papers and cut out articles to read how they were being covered. A family friend had that job for Bob Dole.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
I have a family member who once wrote a blog post critical of Simpson and Simpson actually tracked him down to complain about it!
It always struck me as kinda weird that a US Senator would expend that kind of effort pushing back against a small-time blog post.
Click to expand...
radiofan2023 said:
Some senators used to hire people just to read their hometown papers and cut out articles to read how they were being covered. A family friend had that job for Bob Dole.
Click to expand...
Ever have a blister on your foot (or elsewhere) that's so annoying that you can't stop thinking about it? It may be physically small, but it's in the wrong place and is so painful that it colors your entire day? Once you decide to deal with the momentary pain of lancing it and relieving that pressure you feel better and can go on with your day.

That's why Simpson contacted your relative. Whatever the issue was was annoying enough that s/he was motivated to criticize Senator Simpson publicly. ("Publicly" being a relative term, depending on how popular that blog was and how many folks ever took the time to read it.) Simpson decided to address the issue directly, allow your relative to vent for a few minutes, and thus lance the blister (metaphorically-speaking, of course). There was undoubtedly some calculation about how valid the complaint was, how much credibility your relative had, and the potential for long-term reputational harm if he ignored it. As @DXer said, he was a throwback to another era, in this way as well as others.
 
I finally tracked down the blogger and here's the story. Sen. Simpson was co-chair, along with Democratic Sen. Erskine Bowles, of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which was yet another attempt to address ongoing budget deficits and set the Federal budget on firmer footing. Taking an "all options on the table" position they were seriously considering adopting a Value Added Tax (VAT) as is employed by many countries in Europe. Not liking that idea one bit he made a post mildly criticizing Simpson for agreeing to consider this. And amazingly enough a few days later he actually got a call from the Senator taking issue with his post.

Whatever that conversation sounded like it must have been cordial because he said he was bummed out to hear about Simpson's death.
We were both amazed that the Senator tracked him down based on a post in a Web 1.0 blog that was read by at most a few hundred people.
The VAT idea got steamrolled by the Tea Party Movement in a way that tiny blog could never hope to do.
 
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