Someone claiming to be the amazingly well-traveled Obama supporter Ellie Light called into the Michael Smerconish Morning Show a few hours ago. Ben Smith at Politico has the audio, but if you don’t have 10 minutes to spend on it, here are the high, um, lights.
Ms. Light, who sounds very soft-spoken and grandmotherly, claims:
- Ellie Light is her real name.
- She’s from southern California, but she’s a traveling nurse who goes around the country on 13-week assignments.
- She wrote that letter and sent it all over the country, while claiming to live in dozens and dozens of different places, because: “For whatever reason, it seems like everybody’s just deserting the hero. It’s only been a year. Seems odd.”
- People don’t realize that the president has “an awful lot on his plate.” Apparently, this sets him apart from every other president in U.S. history. I won’t claim to speak for Ms. Light, but I think the blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of George W. Bush.
- “I think I need to own up that I did misrepresent my location in some of those places.”
- She seemed to be saying that she submitted the letter to many of those newspapers, but not all of them. And she only submitted it to places where she had been as a traveling nurse. She seems like a pleasant enough lady, and after listening to her I’m less skeptical of her sincerity, but perhaps logic is not her strong suit.
- “If I was a reader of a smaller newspaper and I had opened up the letters to the editor and saw a letter of something of national importance and I thought it was written by a neighbor of mine, I would give it more credence… On reflection, that’s probably not a very good idea.”
- She’s going to keep writing letters to the editor, but only under her actual address.
- “If I do say so myself, my letter was pretty darn good.”
- She’s not part of any organization. She just doesn’t think Obama has gotten enough free passes already, for whatever reason. But she admits she took the wrong approach when saying so.
Sounds plausible enough to me that she’s a well-meaning private individual who made a mistake. How about you?
P.S. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
P.P.S. Ellie Light is actually… I don’t even know. I’m frightened and confused. That’s what I get for assuming somebody isn’t a bizarre liar. Won’t happen again.