A conservative blogger’s recent attempt to sandbag Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist Connie Schultz proved to be an epic failure — and the only thing saving him from public embarrassment is Schultz’s own grace.
The story begins on July 9, says Schultz, when she received an email from the inquiring reporter, who promptly misspelled the name of the author, former columnist for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer for commentary:
Dear Ms. Shultz,We are doing an expose on journalists in the elite media who socialize with elected officials they are assigned to cover. We have found numerous photos of you with Sen. Sherrod Brown. In one of them, you appear to be hugging him.
Care to comment?
Uh oh, you might think. Soon she’ll have to defend herself from allegations of being overly cozy with a subject she reports on. Well — not quite.
On July 10, she replied with this:
Dear Mr. [Name Deleted]:I am surprised you did not find a photo of me kissing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown so hard he passes out from lack of oxygen. He’s really cute.
He’s also my husband.
You know that, right?
Connie Schultz.
Brown and Schultz have been married since 2004, as even a cursory Google search or glance through either one’s Wikipedia page would show. She recounted the amusing tale on Facebook and noted that as of Tuesday she hadn’t received a response.
Reached by TPM, Schultz preferred not to name the blogger or publication.
“I figure he’s an intern, as his name didn’t show up on the web site he represented,” she wrote in an email. “You know us liberal moms: I want to give him a chance to learn the right lessons from this, which isn’t going to happen if I out him.”
Sahil Kapur
Sahil Kapur is a congressional reporter for TPM. He previously covered politics and public policy for numerous publications including The Guardian and The Huffington Post. He can be reached at sahil [at] talkingpointsmemo.com.
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