Several of Mike Kernell’s friends (and that
included most well-known local Democrats) got together at Raffe’s Deli and Beer
Garden on Poplar Saturday night to raise some money for the longtime District 93
state representative.
To all outward appearances, it was just like all
the other small-ticket fundraisers held for Kernell over the years. Many of
those were coke-and-pizza affairs held at Garibaldi’s, on Walker Avenue near the
University of Memphis. This one varied the hors-d’oeuvres slightly (there were
sandwiches, and you could sample some rare beers (including one from Poland
that’s worth a trip to Warsaw), but Kernell looked and sounded the same.
You wouldn’t know just from looking on that
Kernell’s 20-year-old son David, a student at UT-Knoxville, is under a brand-new
federal felony indictment as the accused hacker of vice-presidential candidate
Sarah Palin’s email. But he is, and the son’s travails have clearly been visited
upon the father, as even a casual conversation about the matter quickly reveals.
Kernell is forthcoming about the matter so far as
he knows, which is very little. Friend and foe alike in the General Assembly –
and there are few if any of the latter – concede that the Southeast Memphis
legislator’s stock of integrity (large) and computer expertise (small) makes him
an unlikely suspect as a collaborator in whatever activity David Kernell was
involved in at Governor Palin’s expense. Indeed, state Rep. Stacey Campfield of
Knoxville, a certified right-wing Republican and a blogger and computer maven
himself, quickly rose to his Democratic colleague’s defense once the fact of the
son’s predicament became public.
Most people suspect that the hacking affair was
more prankish than sinister, more ad hoc than organized, but on that the jury is
still out (in actual fact, it isn’t even
in yet, since action on the case evidently won’t be taken,
if at all, until the current election is over). In any case, the degree of
technological legerdemain involved would seem to have been relatively
unsophisticated – it involved guessing at the Alaska governor’s name/password
combination, conning a new one out of Yahoo, and posting on line a few innocuous
emails of hers.
Still, the matter is too serious to be easily
dismissed, a fact noted by Mike Kernell’s Republican opponent in the current
election, Memphis police officer Tim Cook, who put out a statement last month
which rapidly segued from concern to condemnation:
“When I heard the rumor that Mike Kernell’s son
was the one responsible for hacking into the Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah
Palin’s email I was stunned. As a father I sympathize with Mike Kernell and can
understand what he is going through as a father. And I will pray for him and
his family during this ordeal.
“However, this clearly shows what family values
Democrat Mike Kernell has taught his children. It reflects the values of his 34
years as a State Representative in and for the Democratic Party. These are not
the type of values the citizens want in their representatives. …”
Whereupon Cook went on to suggest a possible media
conspiracy to ignore an alleged relationship between David Kernell and Obama
campaign manager David Plouffe.
We shall see what we shall see, in due time.
Meanwhile, Mike Kernell, one of the few members
of the General Assembly who have no other vocation, soldiers on against Cook, as
he has against numerous challengers in the past, several of them endowed with
more organizational and financial support than Cook has at present.
Cook has his issues, though – among them a
determination to promote the wider use of diesel fuel and an aversion to the
income tax, a version of which Rep. Kernell, also known for his support of
environmental and ethics legislation, once voted for.
Again, we shall see what we shall see.
An additional wrinkle, called to mind by the
presence at Kernell’s weekend fundraising event of state House Speaker Pro Tem
Lois DeBerry, is the fact that Tim Cook Jr., — who, as a computer
administrator, is presumablhy more tech-savvy than his
father – is the Republican nominee against Democrat DeBerry. That fact prompted Rep. Kernell, an incurable punster, to say at his fundraiser, “Too many
Cooks will spoil the legislature!”
