It
wasn’t till I found myself explaining how to publicize a rumored gay
affair while playing with my six month old son in my backyard that I
began to question my parenting style.
I’m
a political consultant. Specifically, an opposition researcher. I dig
up dirt. Those ads you see screaming about some politician’s taxes or
affairs or dog on the roof of his car, those are (somewhat) my fault.
I’m also a dad. In April 2012 my son, hereafter known as the Nonvoter, was born. Being a relatively
fortunate twenty first century man I decided to be a work from home dad.
My wife decided to be a stay at home mom.
No
one would call parenting a glamorous job. Rewarding, worthwhile, sure,
but not glamorous. And neither is consulting. Forget the dumb TV shows
and the stylized books and whatever the hell you read on your partisan
blog of choice. Consulting is pretty similar to parenting. Alarming sums
of money change hands, almost never to YOUR benefit, everyone fucking
screams all the time and you’re up all night cleaning up someone else’s
shit. That’s political consulting. I like my job well enough, but I love
my son, and that is why I hope to god he doesn’t ever get into
politics.
Anyway.
My son had just figured out how to sit up by himself and he was using
the occasion to check out the edibility of the grass in the backyard.
My wife had been concerned about the propriety of watching a
potentially screaming infant while talking to theoretically important
(or at least paying) clients, but the fact of the matter is a baby is a
great prop. A call that is really important you can just cut off and
call back from a quiet room. And if it isn’t that important, a baby is a
great way to guilt the other party into hanging up. So I smiled and
made faces at the Nonvoter while I went through one of the most irritating
canards in opposition research, the Gay Sex Rumor.
I
get this at least once every election cycle. It’s so routine I can
recite it in my sleep. The candidate is the most liberal tolerant
abiding person ON EARTH and would never impugn someone’s sexual
orientation, but the opponent is [a Republican/a gay basher/some vague
manner of hypocrite/just a general asshole] and there have
been...rumors. He was caught by his girlfriend going down on another
man. He was seen in a gay bar two counties over. He lives with his
mother. This is going to blow the lid off of this race and can you,
opposition researcher, get it in the press without it being attached to
us?
It
doesn’t work, and it’s also disgusting. Alas, the range of client
values keeping this little guy in diapers is an order of magnitude wider
than the range that makes me happy. So I pried grass clumps out of the Nonvoter's hand and explained that the client could, I guess, pitch the story
to the Windy City Times, a gay interest paper in Chicago. By the end of
the conversation the Nonvoter was getting bored, and when he gets bored he
gets angry, so I started speaking in my enthusiastic distract the baby
voice. “YEAH that’s the editor’s email! SURE, send the memo I wrote over
to them!” The manager probably thought I was crazy. Suits me.
So I hung up, and I sat the Nonvoter on my lap on the back stairs. He looked at me quizzically.
“It
is never, ever okay to be mean to people because of who they like. Not
even if they’re Republicans. Remember that, little guy. Sometimes Daddy
works for very bad people. Don’t be like them!”
