Yesterday on the WVNN’s Dale Jackson show Alabama AG Troy King was asked if rumors circulating on the blogs were true he replied that he does not “discuss rumors.”  I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that such a reply isn’t going to put any rumors to bed.  But was that a wise reply or not?

At first I thought it was a pretty poor answer.  Just say “no” or “I am not gay.”  End of story.  But after trying to figure out his rationale I think it might be a reasonable, although shortsighted, response.

First of all, if he flatly replied “no” then he opens himself up to allegations of lying because I’m confident that aspects of the rumors, in some form or fashion, are true.  If he just gave a categorical “no” to the rumors and a reporter knew that one part, a non-salacious part, was true then King would have given him a green light to report on the findings pertaining to all rumors.  In other words he would legitimize the rumors.

Worse yet, what exactly are “the rumors?”  Lots of different things have been said.  For King to give a precise answer he would have to do a point by point dissection of the many rumors, something I don’t think many people (especially elected officials) would want to do.

Could King have cherry picked the rumors and replied only to the ones (or one) that he thought were most harmful?  Yes, but giving that inch may have defined expectations that he should and would also respond to even more direct questions about other parts of the rumors.  Maybe King is simply against the idea of the headline “Troy King says he is not gay” appearing on the front of all the Alabama papers.

Maybe King thinks this rumor is running out of steam and tackling them head on only re-energizes them.

Personally, I think I would have just said that I am not gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  If King plans on running for another elected office in Alabama and he thinks these rumors are going away then he is crazy.  He will have to address them eventually.  Guaranteed.  I would think it is better to weather the publicity now and put the whole thing behind him rather than do it during a campaign.  But that’s just me.

Related content:

This entry was posted by Brian on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under Alabama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.