An actual socialist at the Daily Kos apparently takes issue with my contention that Mary Jo Kilroy is a socialist. I guess she’s too mainstream and boring, man.

Anyway, it’s quite an amusing read, largely because our anonymous socialist writer can’t decide what he finds objectionable about my article — the idea that I’m smearing Kilroy as a socialist (something he really oughtn’t think is a smear considering he…well, is one) or the idea that I’m giving Kilroy too much credit. Still, there are a couple of attacks on the reportage that I should clear up.

The author writes (and I detect some sarcasm here): “Well that sounds promising. She was a partner with a Democratic Socialist. By the transitive property of political affiliation, that makes her a socialist!” Uh, yeah, at the point where the business they were both in was publishing a paper that openly advocated socialist politics, it does.

The person also seems to have a problem with the fact that the evidence is 20 years old. For some reason, the fact that Kilroy is listed in current issues of Democratic Left, the national magazine of Democratic Socialists of Ohio, as a person to be supported, doesn’t register.

Moreover, our anonymous author wants to know who’s responsible for the quote extolling communism that I cite in the article. The answer is that it was the Senior Editor, John Quigley, who was not fired from his position, nor even demoted, nor was the article even retracted or corrected after Kilroy came on board as publisher. Quigley was also a colleague of Kilroy’s when she was an editor, and not once did she so much as raise a peep criticizing him.

Also, I will point out that I never accused Kilroy of being an outright communist, but I do think the fact that she was willing to associate with a person like John Quigley after already having held public office as a school board member is evidence of a severe lapse in judgment and true ideological tunnel vision. I’m sure Kos writers know all about that.

Finally, I am accused of “unsourced innuendo.” All I’ll say is that I again invite them to look at the archives of the Columbus Free Press at some point and see if any of my quotes are misplaced. I’ve given them years, so finding the relevant microfiche rolls shouldn’t be too hard.

But, of course, that would require work. And we all know how socialists feel about that.