By a certain logic, exactly and completely true. Strangely enough, I blogged about one aspect of this back in 2004.
Barack Obama would probably never have become the Democratic Presidential nominee if he hadn’t first won the Senate race back in 2004… and there was a good chance that Obama would never have become senator if Jack Ryan hadn’t withdrawn from the election… and Jack Ryan wouldn’t have withdrawn from the election if the story had never broken about he and Jeri Ryan visiting swinger clubs… and his visits to swinger clubs never would have become public record if his wife, Jeri Ryan, hadn’t mentioned it in their divorce proceedings… and maybe Jeri might not have wanted to get divorced in the first place if Jack hadn’t tried to pressure her into sexual situations at swinger clubs that she wasn’t comfortable with… and maybe she would have actually gotten turned on that night back in 1997, and said “Yes” to swinging if only she hadn’t seen my bare naked ass.
I hate that someone (anyone) was adversely affected by simply going to a swinger’s club. Especially someone like Jack Ryan. But that pebble was dropped into the water here in New Orleans back in 1997 and it rippled until Jack Ryan’s campaign was doomed. Funny how much can happen… just by dropping a stone.
[From Obama’s Presidential Bid Linked to Swinger’s Club | Kasidie.com, April 2008]
As an aside, too bad the Chicago Tribune does not believe in permanent links to its archives, because I would like to read (and link to) the original Eric Zorn column. In 2004, every blog post was related to me reading the actual print edition of something1 – yet the original article is lost to the ether now. Too bad, I’d like to revisit the complete article.
Footnotes:- in this case, the Chicago Tribune [↩]