Enough Abercrombie-the-hippie digs already
I got an e-mail yesterday from a fellow going off on Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s college days as “an unkempt, stinky, long-haired bearded hippie.”
I get at least one of these a week and can’t tell you how tired of them I am. Criticizing Abercrombie’s current performance is fair game — I certainly do in my column in today’s Star-Advertiser — but railing about how the guy wore his hair 40 years ago is at the bottom of the intellectual food chain.
It’s actually kind of pathetic if that’s the best measure one can come up with to stake a claim of superiority over somebody else.
Youth is a time for testing limits and I’m more suspicious of those who don’t than those who do.
And for the record, I was acquainted with Abercrombie in college and during his Super Senator days and recall him being reasonably well-bathed and not especially malodorous.
Any concerns I had about him back then were less about his appearance than his Abbie Hoffman mentality in which the theater seemed to matter more than the commitment.
Seeing him still so enamored of the cheap drama as a 72-year-old governor worries me.
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Volcanic Ash 
June 15, 2011 at 7:30 am
The criticism of Abercrombie’s appearance was not limited to his university “hippie” phase. During the 1996 Congressional campaign it was pointed out that Abercrombie’s appearance was not in keeping with that of a sitting Congressman. The photos and video of Neil’s unkempt appearance and wild hair (he smelled fine) used in commercials were taken that year (1996) after three full terms in Washington. The message was not so much about his hair, but rather his disregard for his responsibility to represent the values of Hawaii’s people, and general cavalier attitude about the dignity of the office. He was essential still the same self-centered, impulsive, ideologue that he was during his U.H. days. And, he apparently still is.
Dave, your seem torn between telling it like it is and your reflexive “defense” of a fellow liberal you helped elect. Your inner journalist is fighting your inner political activist.
June 15, 2011 at 8:28 am
I ain’t no shrink but Neil is Neil, always has been. Dave and I once wore hair longer (of course we had more then). Neil’s beard has always been relatively unkept. These are trappings unworthy of public debate.
Focus on what he does today and I admit I do not agree with all of it. But I think we have a far more honest governor than in the last eight years.
The stuff Dave refers to is the SOS we heard ad nauseum during the campaign and not much of it stuck because it was/is superficial nonsense.
June 15, 2011 at 8:56 am
Knock off the digs about hair and beard!
Stick to height jokes.
I kid, I kid.
June 15, 2011 at 9:37 am
@hugh clark: There is such a thing as being honest, but clueless, and I think this Gov. Abercrombie is the epitome of it.
June 15, 2011 at 11:35 am
It is not his body which is hairy and stinky, it is his his essence. And now that he is Governor, there is no escaping l’eau d’Abercrombie.
His essence is that of an arm-waving, shouting, know-it-all ignoramus.
He is who he is it is what he is. His entire life history tells him that he will be rewarded for his arrogance.
June 15, 2011 at 7:08 pm
What’s a hippie?
Just kidding
June 16, 2011 at 7:23 am
What wonderful examples of thoughful, carefully considered analyses of Neil”s public policies!