Krystal Ball: "Exhibitionists Deserve Representation, Too"

Well, it was inevitable: First District Democrat candidate for Congress, the unfortunately-named Krystal Ball, is playing the victim card.  "lowkell" at Blue Virginia calls it "fiery," and "passionate."

"Delusional" would be more accurately descriptive.

It's actually a pretty amazing piece, especially insofar as it reveals Mrs. Ball's woeful lack of qualification for public office.  Or as someone with a firm grasp of reality, for that matter.

She invokes California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, and the campaign of Jerry Brown, which was apparently preparing to peg her as a "whore" with the approval or at least acquiescence of the candidate, without managing a word of condemnation for Brown himself.

Of particular interest is this section:

[T]hese photos were released by a right-wing smear blog with close ties to my opponent. I don't believe these pictures were posted with a desire to just embarrass me; they wanted me to feel like a whore. They wanted me to collapse in a ball of embarrassment and to hang my head in shame. After all, when you are a woman named Krystal Ball, 28 years old, running for Congress, well, you get the picture. Stripper. Porn star. I've heard them all. So, I sat in my husband's arms and cried. I thought about my little girl. I couldn't stand the idea that I had somehow damaged the cause of young women running for office. I couldn't stand the idea that I might shame my family, my friends or my supporters in some way.

The tactic of making female politicians into whores is nothing new. In fact, it happened to Meg Whitman, one of the world's most accomplished business women, just last week. It's part of this whole idea that female sexuality and serious work are incompatible. But I realized that photos like the ones of me, and ones much racier, woeuld end up coming into the public sphere when women of my generation run for office. And I knew that there could be no other answer to the question than this: Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.

Let's deconstruct this a little.  "[T]hese photos were released by a right-wing smear blog with close ties to my opponent."  "right-wing smear blog"?  Ball is non-specific, so it's a little unclear about whom she is talking.  I first saw them on Black Velvet Bruce Li, and then, Virginia Virtucon (those have since been removed).  I may even have been referred to the former by no one's Republican, Ben Tribbett (with the wonderful title, "KRYSTAL BALL PICTURES AS CHRISTMAS DOMINATRIX RELEASED!").

Now, I myself have on occasion pegged BVBL as a "smear blog" (ask Faisal Gill), but so far as I know, it hardly has "close ties" to Rob Wittman's campaign.  Virginia Virtucon?  Well, maybe close ties, but "right-wing"?  I guess only in the fevered imagination of the moonbat far Left, where everyone to the right of Teddy Kennedy is "far right," and which finds so appropriate a representative in Krystal Ball (witness her references to "marriage inequality [code for defining "marriage" as, well, marriage], failing schools [oblivious to or ignoring the fact that the far Left and its teacher-union allies have controlled them for decades], an often-tainted food supply [whatever she is talking about; perhaps eggs distributed during Obama's administration?]," etc.

After all, she writes as though the Great Prevaricator's impeachment was about someone's "private life," rather than the truth: that it was about a President's perjury and obstruction of justice.  Ah, if only Richard Nixon had been so shameless!  She writes about how the Great Prevaricator's wife's "expression after she had to face the entire country with her private life exposed for the world to see."

Mrs. Ball represents the far Left's penchant for revisionist history, too, apparently forgetting that Hillary Clinton, too, was shamelessly lied to by her husband, even if you accept for a moment that her response after he finally came clean wasn't all about maintaining her proximity to power.

"they wanted me to feel like a whore."  I guess Krystal Ball actually owns a crystal ball.  Either that, or she's engaging in the far Left's tried-and-true tactic of attacking the motivations of her opposition, and attributing the motives that serve her interests.

Perhaps, just perhaps, dear Mrs. Ball, they wanted to point out that you're irresponsible: irresponsible for that behavior; irresponsible for allowing it to be photographed; irresponsible in your choices about those with whom you associate.  Perhaps Howard Stern should run for Congress, too.

And please don't try to wrap yourself in the mantle of "female sexuality," and fevered femi-Nazi caricatures of Conservatives.  I truly believe that most Conservatives don't give a rat's rear-end about your private sexual behavior, or that of most people.

Which raises the question: from where did the photos come?  Who released them?  Who had them in their possession?  Ball asks "How did this happen?," but on a broader level, complaining that "Politics is a nasty game," without expressing any interest in who it was who actually brought them into the public sphere.  No; she'd rather attack the messenger.  And as "nasty" as at least one party she attended?  Hmmmmm.....

And surreal in the extreme is her assertion that:

[P]hotos like the ones of me, and ones much racier, would end up coming into the public sphere when women of my generation run for office. And I knew that there could be no other answer to the question than this: Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.

Really?  That's quite a commentary of women of Ball's generation.  Are so many of them really equally irresponsible and exhibitionist?  After all, I recall the news in the Eighties when a hard-core porn star won a seat in the Italian Parliament, but that was Italy, after all, and her campaign, if memory serves, was more of a lark, akin to Mary Carey's run for California Governor in the Gray Davis recall.

And as the father of a 25-year-old stepdaughter, I somehow doubt "that women of [Ball's] generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere."

But Ball expresses no interest in "how" it happened, instead trashing her enemies broadly, playing the victim card.

Perhaps the real lesson here is that Ms. Ball chooses her "friends" as wisely as she chooses her behavior.  And in both cases, neither commends her for a seat in the United States Congress.

Now, an internship in the Clinton White House?  That's another question entirely.