Election Hero Andy Stephenson (1961-2005). Paul Wellstone, & Rightwing Hypocrisy
Some of you may not know that various folks on the right wing chose to attack paper ballot election activist Andy Stephenson in the last several months of his life with the charge that the fundraising for his medical expenses and surgery at Johns Hopkins was itself a fraud and scam, and that Andy *wasn’t even sick* with cancer.
This charge was perceived to be particularly cutting against Andy, given Andy’s status as a prominent activist publicizing the risks and realities of recent election frauds and irregularities, and publicly charging his belief (based on his full time investigation and activism) that the 2004 presidential election was illegitimate. For just one website dedicated to attacking Andy Stephenson, See for example www.scamdy.com (an entire website set up simply to attack one activist). This website even includes a complaint made to the FBI made against Andy and details the various charges he was forced to respond to while trying to find a cure and treatment for his illness.
Even if one really stretches to excuse the initial attacks as fair questions (given perhaps that radio shows were helping to raise money) the fact that many have not relented even after his death from his very real illness and surgery is vile. For more detail, Seattle Weekly has coverage here just before Andy passed away, and coverage here right after his July 9th passing.
One can only guess at what causes a soul not to pause in their attacks or take their website down when confronted with the knowledge that their accusation of a faked illness was wrong and the person they accused of this is now dead. Instead they have chosen to renew and continue the sarcasm and attacks, though slightly reframed in part as an attack on Andy’s lack of “disclosure’ of his money raised and the continued existence of some of the initial ‘questions’ raised. Given that transparency and disclosure were key activist themes for Andy, they are still straining mightily to continue to pin the charge of hypocrisy on Andy, as if it were the essence of reasonableness that a weak, jaundiced and dying man should account particularly for each penny received or hire an accountant when money is needed by a date certain to obtain a surgery. You know, the equitable and fair argument that if the government has to do it, then dying activists should do it too.
With the Paul Wellstone memorial, it was the exaggerated “attacks’ of the bereaved that were alleged to be distasteful and out of line. But here it is the renewed attacks of non-bereaved that are at issue.
Perhaps now would be a good time to pause and reflect about who the real hypocrites are. An Olympic athlete speaking all the time about (say) winning gold but not yet being in the condition to do that and never having done so, is not a ‘hypocrite’ in the proper sense of the word, even though there is a tension and distance between the talk and the reality that has the ring of hypocrisy in it. To be hypocrisy, one must be headed in the opposite direction of one’s own professed values. As the recent news articles in the Weekly show, even from his hospital bed Andy was trying to tell the nurses and staff about what’s happening to the elections in our democracy, how vote counting is now clouded in secrecy and elections can be changed by a pro without leaving evidence.
Andy was right to ring the alarms on this issue because there is a problem that is pure, certain, immediate and undeniable when either a government or its election machine vendor GIVES TO ITSELF the right and power of counting votes in secret. This power or right to count secretly or using secret methods or trade secrets or whatever you want to call it is a corrupt power. Andy needed to prove nothing more than the fact that this *possibility* has been created and presently exists in our country is a crime against democracy. Yet, even as he lay dying he was stimulating talk and indirectly proving the need for national health care in this country.
Thinking of Andy and “hypocrisy”, it occurs to me that if you are moving in the direction of your values at some personal cost, and even if you’re not quite at the Promised Land just yet, you’re not a hypocrite, you’re a hero.
Posted by Paul Lehto on Monday, July 11, 2005 at 09:42 | Permalink
http://washblog.typepad.com/main/2005/07/election_hero_a.html#comment-7347291
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