July 19, 2004
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refreshing candor, from a politician
Ben Stevens is the son of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (Republican,
Alaska). He represents an Anchorage district in our state
legislature. Recently, D.L. Mooney, a woman who lives in this
same huge valley I live in (the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, which we
shorten to Mat-Su) called Stevens a “whore” for his financial
entanglements with business, consultant fees listed in his financial
disclosures. She said it in an email that she didn’t sign, but I
often don’t sign email since my full name appears in the sender line
anyway.Stevens replied to her email, “Afraid to sign your name? Your just more
valley trash.” We can add bad grammar to Stevens’s faults, as
well as naiveté and political hubris. He says it was a “private
conversation,” that email exchange. He didn’t like it when Ms.
Mooney forwarded his reply to a reporter. What I like best is
that he is refusing to apologize to the rest of us valley trash.
I, personally, think that if any apologies are due, Ms. Mooney should
apologize to whores.Now, a man who lives even farther up the Susitna Valley than I do has
started raking in the bucks with a t-shirt that says, “Proud to be
Valley trash.” I think it’s unfortunate that these two river
valleys have been lumped together the way they have, as a political
entity. True, at their lower ends they do run together, but the
Upper Susitna leads away to the north toward Mount McKinley, while the
Upper Matanuska winds past glaciers and off toward the Canadian
border.Down in the flats where the valleys run together is most of the farming
country in this state. Anyone would be nuts to try farming the
upper end of either valley, but a few nutty ones have tried. The
towns in the lower Valley are bedroom communities for Anchorage
commuters. Out here we cultivate mostly tourists, and our
homegrown citizens are a more individualistic lot than those down near
town. Many of us call ourselves Valley Rats, but I don’t recall
ever having heard us referred to as valley trash before.
Something in the tone of Stevens’s email, though, especially that
“more”, suggests that perhaps in Juneau where he hangs out, or in
Anchorage where he has to maintain a home in order to “represent” it,
it is a common term.
Comments (4)
Valley trash? Dear God!
Well that’s rude as hell…
You know, I’ve never understood why someone would move to a place they don’t like just so they can run for a government office. It doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t it be better to pick a place you’re fond of for such a thing? Then again, I’ve also never understood money as a motive for bastardry.
valley trash huh.. growing up in the ohio valley i heard that term a lot as well, though in that case its a well-deserved moniker for a lot of the people.. However I never heard that term from a politician that was trying to represent their constituancy. But what do you expect.. politicans remove themselves so far from the rest of the world and forget their responsibilities some times. Also sounds like you could make some tshirts to the effect of “the only trash here is the politics”.
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