Our Man Richie

What is with these trolls like trump who think they’re being insulting by calling a person a child-like nickname like “Richie” for Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Trolls have done it to me too, calling me Bobby. I don’t know about Blumenthal, but my aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins called me “Bobby.” My cousins still do and I’m a grandfather! I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I hear it. It’s family. I’ve been covering Blumenthal for years from way back when he was Connecticut’s Attorney General. Like trump, he’s an expert at attracting TV attention, but for entirely different reasons. In fact, he was on local nightly news so much, I began to call it, “The Nightly Blumenthal Report.” He sued everybody who tried to mess with Connecticut taxpayers. I voted for him every time he was on the ballot and drew plenty of cartoons about him. He’s a tireless public servant who never met a camera he didn’t like. Donnie (“Shut the fuck up, Donnie”) trump’s tweet about Blumey’s Vietnam service was typical trump bullshit. Blumenthal did not whine, or cry when he was found out. He was talking to a veteran’s group in Norwalk and said he served in Vietnam. He didn’t. He used deferments, as I did, to avoid the draft during Vietnam. He served in the Marine Reserve during part of the period of the war, but he did not go to ‘Nam. When the press caught him, he did what a politician does. He said he “misspoke.” His political opponents tried to use this against him but it didn’t stick. He beat ‘em all.