After a spate of vandalism incidents at Democratic Party offices around the country in the wake of Sunday's passage of the health care bill, a rumor crossed the desk here at Metro Pulse that Knoxville had had its own incident: a brick through a window at Knox County Democratic headquarters on Morgan Street. The rumor turns out to be true, although it happened a few days before the current foofaraw. "It was St. Patrick's night," party Chair Gloria Johnson confirmed in a phone call. "A brick did come through the window." But given the office's location on the eastern fringes of the Old City, and given that the brick did not come with any note or manifesto attached, Johnson said she couldn't say whether it was politically motivated vandalism or just a random act of hooliganism. "We're not making a big deal out of it," she says. "I don't want anybody to get credit for being a jerk, basically."
Not surprisingly given the tenor of right-wing outrage over the health-care bill (which is to say, the Fascist Socialist Armageddon Death Panel Mandate), the local Democrats have also been on the receiving end of some colorful invective from random angry citizens. "We got quite a few phone calls from folks expressing their displeasure," Johnson says--although she notes that people expecting to leave a tirade on an answering machine have a tendency to turn a bit more polite when someone at the office unexpectedly answers the phone. Some of them, she says optimistically, might even learn something.
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