MONTHLY CATALOG
Me and Joe
About a week ago I received a Facebook message from local congressional candidate Joe Garcia asking to chat “on my blog”. I’m not sure if he wanted permission to leave a comment, chat about my blog, or actually fly over to my hosting provider’s facility, stand on my shared server, and talk to me about some other issue. Either way, I was a bit intrigued and saw no reason not to talk to someone running for Congress. Here’s a copy of our Facebook exchange:
8:30 came and went and I received no call. At around 11:30pm I received a phone call from someone named Juan Carlos who identified himself as a member of the Garcia campaign. He asked if I would like to reschedule my call for the following day and then, assuring me that the campaign does not screen questions, asked what I was planning on asking Mr. Garcia. I informed him that the candidate had contacted me and was extremely vague about the purpose of the call. He seemed a bit confused, but we rescheduled for 5:00pm on Thursday, June 12th.
Just like the previous day, our scheduled time came and went with no contact from Joe Garcia or his campaign. It is now been about 120 hours since our initial call was scheduled and I have not been contacted via phone nor email by the candidate or any of his staffers.
Now, I’m not particularly pained by this. I, frankly, couldn’t care less; but I do expect that someone who is trying to amass campaign support for national public office could, at the very least, honor a commitment that he initiated. The inability to accomplish a simple phone call probably doesn’t bode well for one’s ability to tackle some of the most important issues facing our country.
Had the candidate or someone from his office called to explain why he blew off two back-to-back scheduled phone calls, I would have never mentioned the exchange publicly; but as Mr. Garica is looking to represent many readers of this blog, I feel it is in the public interest to share how he and his campaign go about honoring commitments.
I, on the other hand, have no problem honoring my side of the deal. You wanted to talk on my blog, Joe? Well, here you go.
While you and Joe may share a disdain for the hard-line exile community, I doubt he shares any of the Libertarian ideology that I detect in your writings and support for Ron Paul.
Stunningly, I actually agree with you; all the more reason I was interested in speaking with him. I suspected that it was some attempt to gain some sort of blog cred, whatever the hell that’s worth.
Maybe he’ll hit me back on Twitter of LinkedIn or any of there other trendy internet things his campaign is trying to co-opt. Clearly he doesn’t understand the medium or he would have seen this coming when he blew off the calls.
A “local blogger party”? Give me a fucking break.
He’s hired some former Clintonite to help him with online strategy. He approached me over a year ago, before he was running for congress. I had him on our podcast and the guy was an ass. He wouldn’t let me ask a question, he’d talk all over me. Actually it didn’t start out that way, it started out fine but when I tried to pin him down on the nuances of his views about Cuba he began spinning.
Good luck with that.
P.S. you WERE on the Herald Watch blogroll until you posted your rant about me not being happy for your cousin’s fulbright. On the contrary I’m ecstatic about it.
Being human and, you know, having feelings I pulled the link down in a fit of anger.
I will put it back up because even though Herald Watch is an “isipid [sic] blog” I try to link to the local blogs that link to me as long as they aren’t openly hostile (read Rick AKA Pope Pompous I, supreme pontiff of all SoFla bloggers).
While I appreciate it, it really doesn’t make much a difference to me. I don’t really care who does or does not link to me.
Don’t know really where else to go with that.
Nowhere I guess. I misread your little message in the sidebar. I thought you were saying that you linked to me despite the fact that I didn’t link to you. My bad.
Anyway I saw you got Rick to admit what most liberals won’t: That they don’t trust the American people to make decisions for themselves and trust the state to do it better.
Jeez Louise, Henry…give it a rest. I swear to God you’re obsessed with me. Just STFU already, Homer.
Sorry, Alex, for the garbage that washed up on shore.
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No problem. It’s really is just a bit childish.
Things like that never happen to me - the Garcia thing, not the Gomez de-link thing. I have been de-linked (I am guessing) but no one who de-linked me ever came to my blog to taunt me about it. I generally know why I was de-linked.
I am so sorry you were stood up.
Belated congrats on your cousin’s fulbright. Very cool.
No food references?
Am I supposed to check Facebook for messages or does it email me? Because … I never check.
Joe Garcia stood you up? Wow! That’s a surprise. He’s incapable of logging in to his own computer, let alone posting coherent thoughts on a blog.
I’m ecstatic about your cousin’s Fulbright. I’m glad she’s got a wonderful opportunity to leave the Cuban exile community the f–k alone.