It looked like the sort of facetious thing that people say on Twitter and which are quickly forgotten. Yet Katrina Shealy seems to be pinning her hopes for unseating Jake Knotts on the substance of Tweet sent in 2010.
The Tweet in question is reproduced above.
Perhaps there’s more to it, but one couldn’t find it in either the story in The State this morning, or the post by Will Folks that apparently prompted it. (The story in The State seemed to be of that new variety we’re becoming accustomed to — one that the MSM would never have reported in the past without having nailed down all the facts first, but publishes now so as not to appear out of the loop. Neither Jake nor Ms. Shealy was reached before publishing the story, which speaks of a sense of hurry.)
Here are some of the questions that the story raises in my mind:
- Did Knotts ever say anything to Haddon?
- Did he actually challenge him to a duel? (Duels, of course, properly constituted, require that both parties be gentlemen. I don’t know Haddon, but Jake has never seemed the dueling sort to me. He’s more of the pick-you-up-and-throw-you-across-the-room kind of guy. Ask Dick Harpootlian.)
- Is that Tweet Mr. Haddon’s response to the challenge? If so, it is both unclear, and doesn’t seem to follow the accepted forms. It takes more the form of barroom bluster than a formal reply. Perhaps if he would identify his seconds, we could ask them.
- Has either Mr. Knotts or Mr. Haddon been “out” before (which in the age of dueling meant something different from what it means today)? Who would have the upper hand?
- If there’s any substance to this, will Jake be barred in the future from conducting classes for those who wish to carry concealed weapons? He has taught such classes in the past. One hopes those classes have not involved standing back-to-back, or pacing off distances.
- Does Ms. Shealy in any way have standing to be taking legal action in this matter? She thinks she does, because her aim is to bar Sen. Knotts from office. But how does that give her any more standing than any other constituent? It seems that only parties to the alleged duel would have standing. And of course, the Code would (I assume) bar a challenged gentleman from resorting to the courts in order to avoid the Field of Honor.
I, along with you, await answers to all of the above.
Related Posts
I agree with The State’s editorial that the Legislature needs to fix the ballot situation pronto!
Do we really need to provide more fodder for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?
The sad thing is as crooked as Knotts is, Shealy is as equally nuts. Lexington can’t win by electing either one.
Given that the alleged incident was two years ago, if Knotts said anything it must have been along the lines of “I’ll see you at dawn — of January 14, 2015! Legislators have busy calendars.
As one of the Twitterati, I get frustrated when my attention is called to someone’s Twitter feed, and it turns out to be… inadequate.
Here we have a news story apparently started by a Tweet by this Patrick Haddon, and everybody’s talking about it, so you naturally go to his feed to see what HE has to say about it all… and he hasn’t posted anything since April 30. And THAT was only his second Tweet that month.
And it was totally innocuous:
“Glad to see @BethPadgett on twitter. Yall need to follow. Will be glad you did.”
Well, yeah, OK — and I did go follow her (weird how all of the editorialists in SC seem to be discovering Twitter at once, huh?). But that’s it? Nothing to say THIS month, when you’re in the news?
I don’t know what to make of that…
Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here, this is the war room!
Wasn’t Patrick Haddon the Greenville Chair of the SCGOP around that time?