“Oh, you got a sweet swing”
by digby
I mentioned the other day that my friend Adam Wool is running for state office in Alaska and I said that the political scene up there needs new blood. Boy does it ever. The other day there was a debate between Congressman Don Young and his Democratic opponent Forrest Dunbar. During the debate Young called Dunbar immature and naive to which Dunbar replied, “immaturity was the thing you said behind the curtain there, Congressman Young.” Young blustered in response, demanding that Dunbar tell him what he said. Nobody knew what they were talking about and the debate continued.
Dunbar, reached Friday and pressed about the encounter, said the two were walking near each other backstage when Young said angrily, “You’re not from Cordova any more than I’m from Fort Yukon. I had you looked into.”
Dunbar, raised in that Southcentral Alaska town after his family moved there from Eagle in the Interior when he was a child, said he tried politely responding to Young. Young grew up in California and moved to Alaska as a young man, not long after serving in the U.S. Army in the mid-1950s.
Dunbar, who now lives in Anchorage, said he was puzzled and in a friendly gesture touched Young on his arm lightly and asked: “What are you talking about?” Then:
“He freaked out,” said Dunbar. “There is no other way to describe it.
“He kind of snarled at me and said, ‘Don’t you ever touch me. Don’t ever touch me. The last guy who touched me ended up on the ground dead,’” said Dunbar.
Before walking away from the congressman, Dunbar said he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, saying, “Whatever, man.”
Young replied, according to Dunbar, with a taunting, swishing motion of his own hand: “Oh, you got a sweet swing. You got a sweet swing.”
Nice. Much of this was verified by a journalist who witnessed the event.
Apparently Young has a habit of doing this. He even had to explain in this very debate what happened in a similar incident with a staffer:
During the debate, Young explained his reaction in another infamous incident, when a congressional staffer touched him unexpectedly this summer, and Young twisted his arm.
Young told the Kodiak audience he is a military veteran who has been trained. “Don’t touch me unexpectedly. Don’t do that. He did. He won’t again,” said Young of the staffer.
He’s obviously got some issues. Big ones.
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