Tom “The Hammer” DeLay has hammered back at critics in the press (and we presume he also includes blogs) that have dared raise questions about paychecks going to his hard-working wife and daughter:
In an interview with CNN, Mr. DeLay criticized an article in The New York Times on Wednesday that said his wife, Christine A. DeLay, and his daughter, Dani Ferro, had received more than $500,000 since 2001 from his political action and campaign committees. He called the article “just another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me,” contending that his wife and daughter had legitimately earned the money by working as valued members of his political team.
“My wife and daughter have any right, just like any other American, to be employed and be compensated for their employment,” Mr. DeLay said. “It’s pretty disgusting, particularly when my wife and daughter are singled out and others are not, in similar situations in the Senate and as well as the House.”
That’s RIGHT. There is nothing wrong in the fact that his political action and campaign committees are paying them. Don’t you realize they would have gotten these jobs and been hired if their names were Sara and Gloria Schmidlap? The DeLay-linked organizations obviously did massive job searches to fill these slots and it just so happened that his wife and daughter were the very best candidates he they could find.
End of story (NOT!).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.