Brand Pollution

Over at Murderati, Tess Gerritsen tells a story that's scarier than her fiction:

Telling her mother that she wanted to come to the aid of a library under attack, 11-year-old Sydney Sabbagha stood at the podium before the Oak Brook village board.

"I used to go to the library knowing there were people there to help me find a book. Now there is no one to help me," Sydney said solemnly. "It will never be the same without the people you fired."

Sydney nestled back into her seat, but that didn't stop 69-year-old criminal attorney Constantine "Connie" Xinos from boldly putting her in her place.

"Those who come up here with tears in their eyes talking about the library, put your money where your mouth is," Xinos shot back. He told Sydney and others who spoke against the layoffs of the three full-time staffers (including the head librarian and children's librarian) and two part-timers to stop "whining" and raise the money themselves.

"I don't care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books," Xinos told them.

The story she references goes on to say:

"I wanted that kid to lose sleep that night," a grinning Xinos says Wednesday, as he invites me for a nearly two-hour interview in his Mercedes-Benz in the gated Oak Brook community where he lives. "This is the real world and the lesson, you folks who brought your kids here, is if you want something, pay for it."

"I understand that my philosophy is conservative," Xinos says.

Ah, no, Connie, your philosophy is "I got mine, Jack, fuck you." You are, in short, less of a conservative than you are a complete prick.

At what point are actual conservatives going to try and take their name back from these assholes? For years, Republicans managed to successfully brand "liberals" as weak, foolish and ineffectual, to the point where they ran from the term with euphemisms like "progressive." Is a similar branding going to happen with "conservative," to the point where so many people associate the philosophy with meanness, selfishness and spite that no one wants to be called that any more? We're not there yet, but it seems they're well on their way, and actual principled conservatives don't seem to be doing anything to stop it.