When a political candidate’s favorite pastime is hunting down and killing animals with a rifle, no one bats an eye.
If a candidate participated in a fraternity in college, unless something criminal happened, we really don’t care.
Or maybe the candidate likes to re-enact famous battles of the U.S. Civil War? No big deal.
But if a candidate has the temerity to enjoy fantasy role-playing – either the live-action variety with costumes and boffer swords, tabletop imaginings or Internet-based experiences such as OtherSpace – suddenly it’s the stuff of giggly gossip.
In 2012, Colleen Lachowicz took flak from the GOP when she ran for Maine’s state Senate because of her affinity for World of Warcraft. And now, Jake Rush, a candidate of the GOP in Florida, comes under fire for LARPing as a vampire as part of the Mind’s Eye Society.
Enough is enough.
It doesn’t take Jim Morrison to know that People Are Strange. Everyone’s got some kind of hang-up.
Alexandra Petri probably put it best in her Washington Post blog about the whole affair:
“People are weird. And now the Internet has made this weirdness searchable. Where once your neighbors wondered why you toted that sword around, now thousands of people can peer at your obsession and declare it odd, never mind what they have open in the next window. Everyone has something open in the next window. If you think you don’t, you’re Anthony Weiner.”
That said: The big winner out of all this latest hoopla has to be the Mind’s Eye Society, with oodles of free publicity.
Maybe I should run for public office.
Can you imagine the negative campaign ads?
This candidate:
- Threw numerous journalists out of skyscraper windows.
- Boiled tiny people.
- Killed a man with alien fish sperm.
- Allowed a madman to destroy his own planet.
- Ripped entire universes apart.
Clearly, not someone to be trusted, right?
