it's pronounced "gay-gun"
January 13, 2009 6:31 AM   Subscribe

Tom Geoghegan for Congress.
posted by kliuless (23 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: it's totally unclear why this is here and the title makes it even weirder. If you think this is good stuff on the web, spend a few extra vowels to explain maybe why? -- jessamyn



 
Really?
posted by Pastabagel at 6:45 AM on January 13, 2009


Mystery Meat for FPP.
posted by DU at 6:46 AM on January 13, 2009


He does have the weirdest name of all of the candidates. It's his election to lose at this point.
posted by stavrogin at 6:48 AM on January 13, 2009


Whahuh?
posted by pyrex at 6:54 AM on January 13, 2009


Thomas Frank has his endorsement here; that would be enough for my vote if I lived in Chicago. The Chicago Reader has a list of the other prospective candidates; most of them seem like a combination of the usual suspects and people that really just need a decent hobby.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:57 AM on January 13, 2009


This is not what metafilter is for.
posted by empath at 6:58 AM on January 13, 2009


Can't we just sell the seat and move on?
posted by cjorgensen at 7:01 AM on January 13, 2009


Did you mix up Metafilter with the Chicagoist?
posted by chillmost at 7:01 AM on January 13, 2009


what
posted by fixedgear at 7:05 AM on January 13, 2009


You know, if you say the poster's nickname phonetically...
posted by gman at 7:05 AM on January 13, 2009


Eponysterical!
posted by The Michael The at 7:12 AM on January 13, 2009


Eventually, one of his opponents will trick Tom into pronouncing his name backwards, and then he'll be banished to his home dimension.
posted by adipocere at 7:15 AM on January 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


Thanks for posting this, I would not have known about this guy otherwise and will keep an eye on him. Sounds like his books are worth checking out as well.

I think a lot of the posters above are confusing a U.S. congressional seat with a mayoralty or state-rep seat. A pretty large chunk of the laws that affect U.S. citizens at the federal level (roughly 100%) get made by people elected at the state or local level. You can look it up.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:20 AM on January 13, 2009


It's not "Goff-a-ghin"? That's, err, geogh.
posted by Mister_A at 7:22 AM on January 13, 2009


Great news! Not the best of the web.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:22 AM on January 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


Maybe in 2010 we can have a real senator and not someone filled with self-serving legalism.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 7:32 AM on January 13, 2009


Roland Burriss is the man. Well, a man anyway.
posted by Mister_A at 7:34 AM on January 13, 2009


I think a lot of the posters above are confusing a U.S. congressional seat with a mayoralty or state-rep seat. A pretty large chunk of the laws that affect U.S. citizens at the federal level (roughly 100%) get made by people elected at the state or local level. You can look it up.

What? All but one of the comments above yours is making fun of his name in some way, which doesn't indicate a general ignorance of what congress actually does. The other comment, from Halloween Jack, just says that he would be a good candidate.

Your comment just seemed like a total nonsequiter.
posted by delmoi at 7:36 AM on January 13, 2009


I read most of them as questioning whether this made a good FPP, assuming the objections were because it was a local issue (i.e., the Chicagoist comment). Hope that adds some sequitor.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:49 AM on January 13, 2009


I do live in Chicago, but am outside the fifth district by a couple of blocks. His book Which Side Are You On? is fantastic (the 1990s edition — the Harold Washington Library had the 2004 edition with the new bits when I left my apartment after work the day that he announced, but someone had gotten to it in the time it took me to take the L downtown, a Feigenholtz operative no doubt). I love this, from an American Prospect piece by way of his issues page:
“Indeed, all sides, even the Bob Dole Right, could stand a little more class-based politics, a little more Dunlop-type rationality. ‘The great thing about class-based politics,’ a professor once told me in college long ago, ‘is that it’s rational.’ Instead of the Politics of Meaning, we talk $1.25. The purpose of such politics is not to heat the country up, but to calm it way down. Get back to the America of Dwight Eisenhower, when labor was at high tide and there was social peace. But to get back to that Era of Good Feelings, first we have to remind people, ‘You’re Being Robbed.’”
Unfortunately his campaign seems to be getting far more press nationally than locally, in the best old-Chicago Nelson Algren style of ignoring our interesting people until they get fed up and move to New York. This is a shame because if saving the working and middle classes doesn't appeal to you, just think how great it would be to elect a decent Chicago politician outside of Hyde Park! I imagine all of those grad students to be so smug. "Thank god I don't have to live in the rest of Chicago, with those awful Chicago politicians." And the worst part is, they're right — every Chicago politician worth a damn comes out of Hyde Park — Leon Despres, Harold Washington, and now Obama. With a Secret Service cordon and all of these adoring profiles of the neighborhood in the New York Times these U of C types are going to be entirely insufferable. Wouldn't it be great to show that just because you live on the North Side it doesn't mean you've got to elect crooks and fools? (This is, incidentally, Blagojevich's old seat.)

On preview: Geoghegan is running for a house seat, not the senate. See, it's a bicameral ... ah, forget it.
posted by enn at 7:54 AM on January 13, 2009


assuming the objections were because it was a local issue

Assumption incorrect in my case. I object to mystery meat posts. And when I find out the meat is not Best Of The Web but Some Guy Runs For Office I double-object.
posted by DU at 7:59 AM on January 13, 2009


Double objection double noted.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:04 AM on January 13, 2009


Chris 'Hardball' Matthews was gonna run against Arlen 'Magic Bullet' Spector, but he changed his mind. There goes my FFP.
posted by fixedgear at 8:05 AM on January 13, 2009


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