April 23, 2015 12:52 PM UTC

There's just gotta be better ways to advance the conservative agenda on talk radio than holding the hand of Lisa Pinto

• 3 Comments
• by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

One wonders if the GOP’s Leadership of the Rockies Program, which schooled GOP operative Lisa Pinto, needs to add a class on how to gracefully ignore anonymous tweets.

In her job as Chief Communications Officer for the Jefferson Country  School District, Pinto has massively more important problems on her plate than complaining about tweets directed at her. Yet, she’s wasting time on conservative talk radio whining about her tweets.

You’d any right-leaning talk radio program, normally home base for the get-over-it approach to personal problems, would boot her off the show, but KNUS host Krista Kafer wrapped Pinto in a warm blanket, introducing a April 3 segment on the tweets:

Kafer: “So there are these people out there. I don’t know. Do they not work? Do they not have a hobby? Do they not garden? I don’t know, but apparently they have a lot of extra time just to be mean. I guess being mean is a hobby.”

This opened the floodgates from Pinto, who emphasized that she took time on vacation to discuss the tweets on KNUS 710 AM, not on the taxpayer dime. (Listen below.)

“Thanks for taking up this really important topic,” Pinto told Kafer. “It’s really crazy that this is going on in this day an age in Colorado.”

Really important? Crazy in this day and age?  She’s a communications pro? Maybe she’s under the spell of the Independence Institute, which found recent tweets about Jeffco-School topics so important that it established a website, MeanGirlz.org, to promote them. Read more about this in Westword.

Anyway, Pinto went on for the next 20 minutes or so, making me wonder if she knew anything at all about the content of Twitter.

Pinto: “It’s so personal…I’m a staff member. I’m being paid to do my job. I show up. Sometimes I work 50 hours a week…It’s really hurtful. From day one, I kept hearing this. Unqualified. Had no experience. And if you think back to the civil rights struggle, this is what they always said….Not to brag, but I’m a Yale grad. I’m a lawyer, admitted in the state of New York. I’ve been a veteran prosecutor. I’ve hosted cable TV shows…I’m here for the children…Why don’t we join in doing what’s good for the children, which is modeling mature, kind, spiritual behavior. And when I said spiritual, I don’t mean religious. I mean a path of kindness and tolerance…I marched against injustices in college. I served women and children as a prosecutor advocating for domestic violence victims and children who have been sexually abused. And they don’t know any of that about me, and they don’t seem to care…It’s hurtful. Coming from the east coast, we were really unprepared for this type of name calling…It’s shocking…I have a terrific boss, who’s very supportive…And you know a reporter came up on this, and the tone of outrage in her article, it really made me realize I’m not alone on an island…

Kafer: Racism, to me, is so grotesque, as well as sexism, is so grotesque that when I run into it, which is rare, it’s like running into a dinosaur.

 Pinto: …So that, I guess, would be my ask today. Everyone who sees this stuff say. ‘That is not okay.’ Direct message the site…Unfriend. Direct message. Make your statement. Say it’s not appropriate. That ends the discourse right there.”

Bottom line: These are anonymous tweets! I’ve reviewed the tweets, and I can’t believe Pinto doesn’t have better things to focus on.

As for Kafer, there’s just gotta be better ways to advance the conservative agenda on talk radio than holding the hand of Lisa Pinto.