…seems to be the theme of A Certain Candidate for Office's attacks on the families of judges who are charged with hearing cases against him. This sort of nonsense has several unsavoury aspects:
- If there's a response — whether by the actual target (the judge) or merely the stated one (the family member(s) named in the attacks) — that will be used by That Candidate's counsel, with dubious ethics, and That Candidate's apparatchiks, who couldn't spell "ethics" except perhaps as "зтика" (sorry, I'm rusty), as shrieking and ultimately irrelevant grounds for a recusal motion against the judge.
- If there's no response, the worst of the apparatchiks and assorted hangers-on will take that as irrefutable proof of the truthiness of the attacks.
- Regardless of the response, it will prove that That Candidate, and especially That Candidate's dad, has/had far more money. Regardless of the legality of that money (irony alert — that's precisely what more than one of these proceedings concerns).
- It's That Candidate's First Amendment right to say anything he damned well pleases, regardless of its factual foundation. But if anyone else says anything disrespectful — like, say, pointing out that That Candidate is descended from undocumented immigrants — that's a vicious libel that cannot be tolerated. Not to mention the family tradition of dodging the draft…
So go ahead, Certain Candidate. Show us all exactly what a fourth-grade bully looks like, and acts like, and thinks like. When, that is, a fourth-grade bully does any thinking at all.