Here is a fun little story from about 4 months ago which involves
Morgan Wilkins, the new
poster child for the College Republicans, and Keith Olbermann's "
Worst Person in the World." At the time, we were content to let her fade away, but now that she's risen to a level of national prominence, the story deserves to be told.
Last spring, Morgan Wilkins cozied up to our Democratic campaign under the guise of being a nonpartisan reporter for her student newspaper, the KCTCS Quadrangle.
On March 31 the Horne For Congress campaign held a 2-part fundraiser featuring Paul Hackett. In the spirit of camaraderie, we gave a pair of tickets to Jimmy Moore, the 3rd candidate. Unable to attend, and believing no harm would come of it, Jimmy gave his tickets to Morgan. At the private cocktail reception, Morgan presented herself as a reporter, but was never able to produce any credentials.
At the second event, our campaign manager told one of us to politely ask Morgan to leave, but she said 'it's a free country and a public event.' She refused to leave and started crying. Faced with the option of physically removing a crying teenager from the hall, or letting her stay, we let her stay. All in an all she spent about 5 hours on a Friday night hanging out with the campaign.
She also told our staff that she was trying to intern for Rep. Anne Northup (R). Her companion during the fundraiser was a Northup volunteer (Northup's campaign manager stated that she has had no involvement with their campaign).
After the fundraiser, Morgan was granted an interview with the local candidate but was more focused on asking Hackett about Rush Limbaugh. While she always had her recorder in hand, none of her articles for the student newspaper used a single quote from her interviews. Instead she plagiarized, verbatim, the following passage from www.horneforcongress.com:
Whether leading his troops as a Marine officer into combat in Kuwait and Iraq, giving strength and support to his wife as she successfully fought breast cancer, or volunteering as a coach for his sons' soccer teams, Lt. Colonel Horne has defined himself by the values of duty and honor.
Seeing her article in the paper, we grew suspicious about her intentions, and whether she was indeed on assignment during the night of the fundraiser. We called her editor / staff advisor who told us in no uncertain terms that she HAD NOT been on assignment for the college paper during the fundraiser. The Quadrangle was very specific that Morgan is not associated with the JCC paper, but was an editor there earlier this semester.
Now for the fun part.
On April 13th, Morgan found her way onto WHAS84 am's Francene Show. What a pitiful story! We tried to kick her out of a private event! This poor student journalist was being roughed up by a big, bad Democratic campaign, who had called her editor and tried to get her in trouble: "I was definitely on assignment." Together she and Francene feigned exasperation at the editor being told that she had asked "tough questions." 'Oh, my!' they comiserated, 'Imagine, tough questions!'
Well, enough is enough. Lt. Colonel Horne called Francene on the air and set the record straight with Morgan in the room. Yes, we spoke to her editor. No she had not been on assignment. He pretty much shot down Morgan's entire tale. Francene then took a commercial break, and when she came back she gave Andrew the floor for his platform. By the end of the segment, Francene was a convert trying to push the big plate of crow away from her. "You know, Lt. Col. Horne, I think sometimes it just takes someone to step up and take control of a situation, and you've shown that you're the one to do that ..." (more effusive praise from the conservative commentator).
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to mention that Morgan was Francene's intern. "Was" being the operative word.