NYT Publishes Suspicious Political 'Conversion' Story

Anybody who has spent even a little time reading the left-wing blogs on the Web have probably run across frequent political "conversion" stories. The theme is all too familiar. A friend or relative is an insensitive Republican who just won't listen to the enlightened liberal soul posting the story. However, due to the perceived excesses of the evil Bush administration or the ever wise arguments of the liberal author, the Republican finally sees the light and either ends up supporting the Democrats or becomes a Democrat himself. Of course, the veracity of these "conversion" stories usually crumble after just a bit of analysis.

One big "tell" that the author is somewhat less than truthful is the amazing ability to quote long blocks of dialogue from weeks, months, or even years in the past. Sometimes it is even easier to find out that a political "conversion" story is primarily a work of fiction.

Such was the case with novelist Ann Hood who wrote I Married a Republican: There, I Said It in the Sunday Fashion & Style section of the New York Times. Her story is supposedly about the political conversion of her husband to the "enlightened side" but it comes off as an unwitting self-parody of a smug, self-centered liberal unable to tolerate political diversity. I could also describe Ann Hood as a leftwing loon with a rigid mind but she can do a better job of it herself:

...And I am not just an average Democrat — I lean way, way left. I marched along Fifth Avenue protesting the 1991 Persian Gulf war. I rode a bus to Albany to march against the death penalty. When I enter a voting booth, I choose all the candidates in the same column, without hesitation. My last love, before my husband, Lorne, had grown up in Berkeley, Calif., in the 60s. He was so far left, he made me look centrist.

On my first date with Lorne, over black ink pasta and Chianti, I ranted about union busting.

“Wow,” he said. “You’re pretty passionate about this.”

If he had said, “Wow, you must be a Democrat,” would I have ended the date? Maybe. I had never had an actual relationship with a Republican. Wisely, he did not confess that night. But after I ranted some more, I had a strange feeling that he might disagree with me.

“You’re a Democrat,” I said, “right?”

My husband has a beautiful face, and right then he leaned his beautiful face close to mine and said: “I vote for the best candidate. I read everything I can. I listen to them speak. And I vote for the person who can do the best job.”

“Really?” I said. I didn’t know anyone who did that. Everyone I knew only read about and listened to and voted for Democrats. I remember thinking that he was a good person, a fair person, a better person than I was with my rigid values and unwavering commitment to liberal politics.

Ms. Hood then goes on to assure us of how rock solid of a Republican her husband was...despite the fact he was registered as a Democrat in college and for years afterwards:

Here was how Republican he was: in the early ’90s, he was drafted to run for lieutenant governor of our state on the Republican ticket. But here is how open-minded he has always been: his candidacy was undone when a reporter discovered he had been a registered Democrat since college, and although he had long since stepped to the other side of the aisle, he had never gone to the trouble of undoing that. (He soon did.)

After that less than convincing proof of just how Republican her husband was (just as Lowell Weicker and Lincoln Chafee were "Republicans"), Ann takes solace in the fact that her hubby was pro-choice:

Slowly, my close friends and family met Lorne. And slowly, one by one, they took me aside. “Ann,” they would hiss, “he’s a Republican.”

“But he’s pro-choice,” I would say, hanging on to the one political stance he and I actually shared.

“But he’s a Republican,” they would say.

Despite the fact that Ms Hood's husband was a squishy soft pro-choice Republican, that still wasn't good enough for Ann to keep her intolerance in check:

Angry with him and myself, I began to argue about every political issue that landed on our doorstep with the morning paper. The more I argued, the more I saw how little we agreed. Being in favor of abortion rights was important, necessary even. But was it enough?

Whenever we were with my friends, I would silently tally who was on which side. Inevitably it was my friends, blue; my husband, red. The opposite was also true. Almost without exception, his friends voted red, and I was a minority of one.

Tired of clenching my teeth during their dinner debates about the evils of the Democrats — their flawed policies and lack of morality — I began to fight back. I screamed about partial birth abortion and defended President Clinton over the Monica debacle during an endless dinner at a country club, then cringed at their party-line responses. Lorne at least isn’t as conservative as these people, I told myself. But that offered little solace.

The funniest part of Ms Hood's inadvertent humor occurs when she becomes completely unglued and lets loose with a Republican Derangement Syndrome primal scream:

As luck would have it, we had dinner that night with a group of his old friends. Without politics, these friends always strike me as being warm and caring. But whenever that line is crossed, they seem insane to me, rabid and unreasonable. That night, however, when I heard myself screaming, “Condoleezza Rice is a liar! Rumsfeld is a war criminal!” it became clear that it was not his stridency that was causing this rift in our marriage, but mine.

Gee, Ann. We're sure glad you finally recognized exactly who was being rabid and unreasonable. After that episode, poor Ann found herself wondering if her marriage could survive political diversity:

On the way home, I vowed to stay away from political discussions with this group or any of Lorne’s friends, forever. As we sped through our little blue state, I sneaked a glance at him driving. True, Lorne avoided these arguments. But it didn’t matter. I knew where he stood, and where I stood, and it was not on the same side. Could a marriage survive such a solid barrier of disagreement? How many bipartisan couples did I know? Absolutely none.

Although this sounds like their marriage was about to go over the cliff due to Ann's intolerance for Republicans, even in name only, this soap opera has a nice happy liberal ending:

AND then a few weeks ago I came home from a business trip, pulled my politically correct car into our driveway, and stared hard at the sign in our yard. I blinked. I looked again. It was not a mirage.

The sign said, “Vote Obama.”

I shouted. I actually whooped. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Had one of my children put it there? A neighbor? It couldn’t have been Lorne.

Inside, I approached him cautiously. “There’s a sign in our yard.”

He shrugged and cast a broad smile my way. “He’s the best candidate.”

There's only one little problem with this warm and fuzzy story of a Republican converted over to the side of the liberal enlightment. It wilts under the cold cruel glare of harsh facts. A quick search at opensecrets.org reveals that Hood's husband, Lorne Adrain of Providence RI, contributed $500 to Democrat Chris Dodd on March 24, 2007, long before his supposed conversion to the "enlightened side" so his support for Obama should have been much less of a surprise than was portrayed in the story.

Doesn't the New York Times have fact checkers? Perhaps not but if they do, would it be too strenuous for them to fact check a "conversion" story such as this by simply going to one of several websites that offers information about campaign donors and typing in a couple of words along with a mouse click in order verify its authenticity? As to Ann Hood, the novelist, this story proves she is rather adept at writing fiction.

UPDATE: According to opensecrets.org, a "Lome" Adrain also of Providence, RI and self-employed in insurance sales donated $250 to Sheldon Whitehouse on March 3, 2006. I never heard of anybody with the first name of "Lome" so I am assuming that it was just a misspelling of "Lorne." If so that means that Ann Hood's "Republican" husband donated money to a Democrat senatorial candidate running against the most liberal Republican possible, Lincoln Chafee.