David McElroy

For months, Republicans have been trying to use what happened at Benghazi as the weapon with which to mortally wound Barack Obama’s second term. Although it seems clear to me that some terribly bad judgement was used connected with Benghazi (and it’s clear the administration lied about it subsequently), there’s no way it was something to bring an administration down. It was just politically embarrassing.

The brewing IRS scandal, on the other hand, is starting to look as though Richard Nixon rose from the grave and started giving Democrats political advice for the past few years.

You’ve heard about the scandal already, so I’m not going to waste time covering the specific allegations, partly because you can read them elsewhere and partly because it’s still early in the story, so the facts are developing. All we know is that the Internal Revenue Service used agents to give extra scrutiny to conservative groups and also leaked confidential information to media about conservative groups. (ProPublica is a progressive left media group, and it’s the one admitting that it was given the documents.)

Nobody is questioning that it happened. The question is how widespread it was and who directed it. First, we were told that it was limited to just one IRS office. Then it became clear that IRS officials in Washington were involved. How high did it go? Nobody outside the government knows yet.

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On March 4, I got an email from Chris Kahn. We had only been friends on Facebook for about a year and a half, but I’d come to like and respect him. He remembered that I’d had a bout with cancer last year, so he had some questions.

“I have not gotten the results from the biopsy yet, but my gastroenterologist and oncologist are fairly certain the tumor in my esophagus is cancerous,” Chris wrote. He said the doctor was making plans for chemo, radiation and surgery. “I am not really happy with the idea, but there may be no other option. If you have any thoughts you’d like to share, I’d appreciate it.”

Just 41 days later, Chris was dead.

After his initial message about the surgery, I posted the details of his situation and asked others for treatment options. Nothing interesting and viable turned up.

I didn’t keep up with the specifics of how he was doing, but I knew he was getting treatment. On March 12 — just eight days after his initial message to me — he posted on Facebook about the way his situation looked.

“It has started to spread,” he wrote. “The reality kind of sunk in today. This may kill me.”

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I get a lot of mail from people I don’t know very well (or at all). The subjects are all over the place. Some people write to say they enjoy reading what I write. A few send me nasty messages. One woman was writing love messages about me on her blog and then sending me links. A flight attendant based in Philadelphia wrote to say that she didn’t agree with me about anything politically, but she had fallen in love with me from reading anyway.

A surprisingly large number of people make personal observations about me, based on what they read here and what they see of me on my open Facebook page. I got two messages over the weekend, though, that were sort of thesis and antithesis.

“I love reading what you post because you’re always so happy and nice to everybody,” one woman wrote, in part. “You’re smart and tough, but I can tell you’re really happy and love the world.”

Interesting.

“I’m thinking this inbox is a bit overdue,” a man wrote. “You seem angry lately. I actually prefer angry David vs. disinterested David … angry David remains rational in his anger.”

Both messages had additional content, but these parts stuck out to me. One person sees me as happy. Another person sees me as angry. Which is true? And what could account for people coming to such strongly different conclusions?

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