The number of people reading this blog has been climbing steadily recently — apparently my truth-telling about the upcoming primary election in Montgomery County has struck a nerve. Just the same, I was marveling today as the number of visitors to Left-Hand View surpassed my previous record. I was particularly amused as I saw that a new, popular way of finding me is an internet search on “Will Jawando stupid.”
I have figured out what’s going on, thanks to two fans who separately forwarded Jawando’s newest fundraising appeal to me. In another display of stunningly poor judgment, Jawando himself is driving traffic to my blog by reproducing my content in an email blast that starts out: ““Is Will Jawando Stupid? ” You read that right. That was the title of a vicious and unfounded attack posted against Will this week.” Evidently, Jawando has forgotten that — even without providing a link to my site — his email recipients know how to type “Will Jawando stupid” into a search engine. And once those recipients get to my site, they see the very substantive reasons why Jawando has no business getting in the way of the worthy candidates in the race.
Here are the two top results are when you type the search term into Google:
You, Dear Readers, are not stupid. So you’re wondering as you look back to my May 17 post, where the word “stupid” is. Well, this may surprise you, but your ever-loving blogger sometimes gets carried away. The first version of that May 17 post was indeed titled, “Is Will Jawando Stupid?”. If you click on that search result in Google, you’ll now get to an error message, because I took that page down. I republished the post and marked it “[revised],” because I was concerned that perhaps I had gone overboard the first time. I not only rewrote the headline to something a wee bit less provocative (Google’s second search result), but also tightened up the rest of the post to focus better on what I was really trying to say.
A friend called me tonight and said, “You need an editor, Berner.” He’s right. Are there any volunteers? (I’ll offer you half of what I make as a blogger.)
Anyway, the Jawando campaign has decided to reinforce the “stupid” meme and it’s getting a lot of play. In between reveling in my newfound fame, I am humbled by the fact that my little opinion piece is helping Jawando to bury his own campaign, only adding to the damage he has done by bad-mouthing Sheila Hixson at voters’ doors. And for that, I say: “Thank you, Will!”
I have one more post re Will Jawando in store. After that, we can turn to more serious topics.
©2014 Keith Berner
