Under The Dumb

File under: Is our Republican governors learning yet?

Like tugging on Superman's cape, spitting into the wind and pulling the mask off that old Lone Ranger, there is a very old saying about the inadvisability of picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.

And further down that same Vector of Stupid would be, say, picking a fight with one of America's most famous living writers who sells books by the metric ton and knows how to use the Twitter machine,

Maine's Republican governor is apparently unfamiliar with this principle:

 Stephen King wants Maine's governor to apologize for saying he didn't pay taxes 

The governor of Maine has learned the hard way that if you make an author — specifically Stephen King — angry, you'll get scolded in colorful terms on a variety of platforms.

The conflict began when Gov. Paul LePage (R) stated in his weekly radio address that King no longer lives in Maine or pays income taxes in the state. This is absolutely untrue, King said. "Governor LePage is full of the stuff that makes the grass grow green," King wrote in a message to Bangor's The Pulse AM 620, which he owns. "Tabby [King's wife] and I pay every cent of our Maine state income taxes, and are glad to do it. We feel, as Governor LePage apparently does not, that much is owed from those to whom much has been given." He also sent an email to the Portland Press Herald, saying that in 2013, he paid approximately $1.4 million in state taxes.

On Twitter, King — a Democrat who endorsed LePage's rival in the 2014 election — called the governor out again, saying he "implied that I don't pay my taxes. I do. Every cent. I think he needs to man up and apologize."

...

Being from Illinois, I am keenly aware how very low our High Horse is when it comes to sneering at other people's governors.

Still, deciding to go out of your way to dick with a man who can make you immortal just so he can kill you every day forever seems not just stupid, but positively...unnatural; a violation of every basic law of mammalian self-preservation I have ever heard of.

But in a country where our elite media has abdicated its most fundamental responsibilities and now openly canoodles with the enemies of democracy, I guess there is a weird logic to the mantle of defending our democracy being taken up by horror writers, fart joke makers and obscure bloggers living in cornfields...