I wanted to send an interesting follow-up to close something that I had raised last week.  You may recall an original posting that had appeared on the Kevin Powell for Congress campaign blog last week (see: http://www.kevinpowellforcongress.org/featured_blogs2/2008/08/13/i-got-a-story-to-tell/).

Last week I took serious offense at this arrogant attack and posted a thread here on R8NY (see: http://www.r8ny.com/blog/slothman8888/kevin_powell_likes_demeaning_teenagers_exclusive.html) which then became a hot thread mainly due to responses left by a few workers from Powell (Gene Johnson, Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, and Powell's Campaign Manager, Erica Perkins), from Towns, as well as several voters.

Numerous blogs and online news-sites picked up the story too, raising the pressure.  I'd been watching it for a week because I thought, at some point, something would have to give.  Well, today, something did ...

As of this morning, the post is removed from the official Kevin Powell for Congress blog.

It seems the Kevin Powell for Congress campaign has finally, after a week of bad press and dozens of negative online comments here, on KP4C, and elsewhere, had the good sense to remove their post attacking Ed Towns's campaign staff.

So let me take a moment to applaud the Powell campaign for finally, FINALLY coming to its senses.  Gutter politics by any other name is gutter politics.  And in this day and age, the last thing anyone should be doing is discouraging America's youth from getting involved to help change the system from the inside.  I don't care if you're a canvasser for Towns, or a campaign worker for Powell (like Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein).

The fact is the youth are in there trying their damndest; they should be welcomed by everyone of every age (even if you don't necessarily know what "hater" or "IMHO" mean).  And with Obama looking to re-shape the landscape of America for years to come, we can't afford to discourage one person.

But I'll offer one criticism.  No apology, no clarification, not even a replacement message explaining the deletion?  Nothing.

You know Kevin, you and your campaign have taken a beating the past few months for coming across as arrogant, self-righteous, and self-involved.  And IMHO, your staff hasn't really helped to reverse that, especially Erica Perkins.  In two responses I've seen online from her, all she has done is reinforce all those bad impressions.  At least Michael Spitzer Rubenstein tried to kill the ruckus on Friday the 15th, 5 days ago.  But for 5 days, Kevin, your campaign decided to let the pot boil over.

And now, in the middle of the night, you pull the blog without apology or explanation?

I think that final moves tells alot about your campaign.  You sit there, try to score points by attacking the youth.  You get called on it and your staff goes on the attack.  You get more and more negative feedback on how wrong your campaign was behaving.  Then like a thief in the night, you just kill the post and hope no one notices.

You know, a good candidate for office would have simply stepped in last week and killed this matter with a quick, honest, forthright explanation.  That would've been that, end of story.  Really!

But by leaving it up for 7 days (during which the bad press just kept adding up), pulling it now seems like you only did it because you didn't want any more bad press.  Not because you, or Erica, or Gene, or Michael or anyone over there actually thought attacking Towns's campaign staff was wrong. 

Sadly, by winding up the matter like this - I'm not sure it'll change people's views on your campaign being arrogant and self-centered.  You probably still don't think you did anything wrong, and that's why there is no apology, no explanation, nothing.

But as you saw the past week, lots of folks out there do think you were wrong.  ANY decent human being can see that scoring points by attacking teen campaign volunteers is wrong!  And the fact you don't see that shows you are still either out of touch with folks, or just so wrapped up in yourself that you can't admit a mistake.

Either way, I don't think this kind of attitude is what Brooklyn wants its representative bringing to Washington.