Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right

Yesterday was a bit of an odd day for me.

After a couple of days of criticism from myself and others, including my revelation that his office has no written ethics policy, Governor Doug Burgum announced that he would be reimbursing Xcel Energy for $37,000 worth of Super Bowl tickets.

The right decision, I think. Accepting those tickets was inappropriate.

But on social media talk radio host Scott Hennen got after me for writing negative things about Republicans:

Ironically, Hennen’s insistence that the Super Bowl tickets story was a nothingburger came just shortly before Burgum announced that he’d be paying Xcel back for the tickets.

Whoops!

But the irony didn’t stop there. On the same day my commentary landed a Republican governor in some hot water, earning me recrimination from partisans on the right like Hennen, I was also getting it from the left. My colleague Mike McFeely implied that I’m some sort of a right wing liar in a blog post about the whole Heidi Heitkamp high-fiving Chuck Schumer over defeating an abortion bill thing.

McFeely built his commentary on that laughable Politifact “fact check” about the mechanics of what does and does not constitute a high five. I guess it was all a lie because some think it was more an awkward celebratory hand grasp than a high five? And that it wasn’t really about the abortion vote despite it happening just seconds after Heitkamp’s vote was announced to the Senate chamber?

Whatever.

My point in this post really has nothing to do with Heidi Heitkamp or Doug Burgum. Rather I was amused that I had somehow managed, on the same day, to inspire accusations from the right that I’m some sort of a traitor and accusations from the left that I’m a part of the vast right wing media conspiracy.

That seems like a good place to be.

For what it’s worth – and I know my critics won’t believe this, mostly due to biases of their own – I will never shy away from being critical of something I feel is wrong and it doesn’t matter if the something is perpetrated by a Republican or a Democrat or some other flavor of politico.

You and I might disagree on what is and is not worthy of criticism, but for me it will never have anything to do with partisan affiliation.