Q the Eye/08.01.09

Dear LakeCountyEye,

I have a big election ahead in 2010 and need to remind the voters every chance I get that I serve in the armed forces. My handlers have me tweeting all about it and these go on my election website. But some gossipy reporter found out and now my c/o is all over me for campaigning & disclosing my location while on active duty and all sorts of other stupid nitpicky stuff. Do you know how totally boring it is to be confined to your top secret Pentagon office all day and expected to stay out of everyone's business? I'm all a-twitter now, with anchors awaiting.

About 15 Minutes Ago from ARPANET

Dear Tweety,

Your LakeCountyEye salutes the men and women who serve in our armed services. Their sacrifice & bravery is the foundation that our democracy rests on. These men & women in uniform, past & present, are the reason ours is a time where the free exchange of ideas is not only tolerated but vital to our way of life. And your LakeCountyEye is committed to helping anyone in our armed forces regardless of rank or title. It doesn't matter if you're a rear admiral or just a buck private or even a goldbrick marking time to pad out a thin resume.

Your LakeCountyEye confesses not being able to quite figure out Twitter-mania, but was able to find a News-Sun story similar to yours, and a textbook example of how not to go about damage control. In that risible report, the serviceman/pol tweeted thusly ...

On duty @ the Pentagon's National Military Command Center. All is currently (relatively) quiet. Honor 2 be back w/ my fellow Navy colleagues

... only to be outed the following week by the Capitol Fax Blog.

One dunderhead on the pol's staff came up with this lame excuse: His boss ...

did not post while on duty. In situations when he is unable to use Twitter, (i.e. while on reserve duty) a staff member posts a preapproved tweet.

Um, so your boss pre-Tweets a bunch of messages and loads them into the Walkman. And after he is out of town & on duty a staffer clicks the send button. Really? Your LakeCountyEye is reminded of another laughable claim made by another Congressman: that he read the entire Cap & Trade Bill on the night before the vote. These guys must think we're all a bunch of unvarnished maroons or something.

But your LakeCountyEye digresses. Seriously, what you need to do is contact a journalist you know with an exclusive. Tell the reporter you're a principal player in one of Dick Cheney's secret off-the-books operations, so off-the-books that no one in the Obama administration knows anything about it. And you can't divulge any details -- drop some phrases like shadow government and extraordinary rendition and Turkish prison -- but the whole Twitter thing was a planned subterfuge to misinform the enemy. Be sure to get the reporter to agree this is all off the record and not for attribution and deep background. This guarantees the story will leak quicker than a cup of hot Starbucks on the 4th of July. And problem solved!

Now you're probably wondering just who is going to believe a cock & bull story like that? Your LakeCountyEye hazards to guess -- anyone gullible enough to believe that the messages were merely pre-written tweets posted later on by some unnamed staff member?

If you are an elected official, or a previously elected official, or just a private citizen under indictment, send your political questions to Q the Eye c/o ... LakeCountyEye@gMail.com