The aftermath of Redfin’s congressional testimony was initially rather ho-hum.
My parents and their elderly dog fell asleep watching out for us on C-Span (in the middle of the day, actually). Chairman Bob Ney left a kind, careful message on my answering machine just a few days before announcing his retirement from Congress. A high school guidance counselor who’d read the testimony wrote me an oddly encouraging note.
But then C-Span must have decided to air the hearing after all (we’ll post it here as soon as we can find it). The way we figured it out was through feedback submitted via our site. Embarrassing personal critiques were forwarded by engineers who monitor the alias for bugs, though I think they know I’m already on the alias anyway.
One person wrote a note called Maxine Waters vs. Kelman that consisted almost entirely of:
“Next time, be prepared: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00006690&cycle=2006”
Which I liked. But my favorites are always the ones nearly incoherent with rage, like this one from a Sarasota broker:
From: Bruce Y
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 4:38 AM
To: feedback
Subject: Kelmen in Concress
Glenn Kelman,
Saw your weak, whiney testimony in congress.
You have never been a RE broker, you are a computer geek. (Checked you out).
You arrogant little twit.
Get off you dead ass, stop your whining and let a real job.
Say “Hi” to your mommy for me.
Bruce Y
What are the chances that Bruce didn’t say something very similar 20 years ago, right before stuffing an 80-pound 9th-grader into a girl’s locker?
His tone reminded me of an essay written by the New York Times’ conservative columnist David Brooks, who observed that all political divisions spring from primal high-school-age differences between handsome jocks with the “emotional depth of a cocker spaniel” (future conservatives) and sensitive, misunderstood nerds who “have as much personal courage as a French chipmunk in retreat” (future liberals).
Maybe the real division is between “computer geeks” and real estate agents, though we have plenty of both here, and we all seem to get along fine.