Deserving of the scorn

If this area sends former disgraced congressman Jim Traficant back to Congress, we deserve all the scorn, ridicule and shame that will be hurled our way.

It is already bad enough. Out of town newspapers write about a broken down steel town and we haven't a major steel mill here since the early 1980s. They never forget to mention our high unemployment rate, Youngstown's high homicide rate and all the politicians over the years who have been caught and sent to jail for illegal activities and our organized crime activity -- although a lot of the out of town media are quick to forget that Mahoning Valley mobsters were often the lackeys for mobsters in their cities who bribed their politicians -- but that's another blog for another time.

One of the things we have is a collective thin skin, and I will confess that at times I have the thinnest skin of all. But to let in a man whose main claim to fame is his loud mouth who did nothing but enrich himself and his buddies at the public trough would be a disgrace. It would show that we did not learn from our past, and that maybe all those stories about us were right.

H.L. Mencken once wrote that the only way to look at a politician is down. That is not the case with Traficant. The only way to look at him is to not look at him at all.