THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411050206
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
They just don't get it, these wisenheimers who are so sure that Oliver North is the worst thing to hit the commonwealth since tobacco, as sensible Virginians will surely realize come Tuesday, if not be-fore.
The Republican can-di-date for the U.S. Senate isn't the greatest thing since running water, either; Virginia may not send him to the Senate. But defeat won't prove Ollie North the embarrassment his critics claim, and victory won't prove his sup-porters the ignoramuses they imply. Support for his philosophy goes beyond the Bubbas and Bubbettes sans a champion since George Corley Wal-lace. And support for North's burr-under-the-Beltway style inches up the middle of the political spectrum every time today's heirs to the pointy-headed intellectuals assume their contemptuous, superior tone.
Which is right often. And which includes that major portion of the media which apparently concluded long ago that North's supporters must be either dumb or duped; so dogging Ollie's every step and story will smarten them up, or wise them up. Wrong. Snotty reporting, condescending commentary make the media look biased at worst, unserious at best. And they make North look pre-cisely how supporters perceive him: a can-do guy whose gutless bosses threw him to a hostile press and a hypocritical Congress, and who twice bested both, once on behalf of the Contras, once on behalf of himself.
The list of North's transgressions is long, but repeating it only starts the did/didn't duet. Suffice to say what his loudest critics never do: that plenty of politicians who never lied to Congress got there by telling deliberate half-truths about them-selves and others, by asking forgiveness for wrongs that had no larger purpose than self-indulgence. Still do.
You can understand all that and vote for Oliver North or understand it all and vote for somebody else. Whichever, you're ahead of the wisenheimers. That's something else they just don't get.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE CANDIDATE by CNB