Nikki Tinker's "Denouncement"

Following my comment yesterday on Nikki Tinker's failure to denounce the anti-Semitic flier being circulated in Memphis about Steve Cohen, I received an email claiming that she had, in fact, denounced it on the TV news.

After searching the websites of every news outlet in Memphis for about half an hour, I finally found one little blurb on WMC-TV:

Nikki Tinker, the only candidate who has announced she's running against Cohen, said she had no knowledge of the flyer.

"I would not stand for any attacks on the Jewish faith or any other faith for that matter and I just want to make sure everybody knows that Nikki Tinker doesn't play those types of politics," she said.

So everything's ok now, right?

Not quite. I'm not buying it.

First of all, she's still claiming she doesn't know anything about it. How is that possible, THREE DAYS after the fact, after it's been in both the Commercial Appeal AND the Washington Post? This claim only adds to my suspicions. And how can she denounce something that she knows nothing about?

But, assuming that she does know about it and is just lying, please note that she didn't say that she DOES NOT stand for these attacks, only that she "would not". That's not a denouncement, that's a hypothetical. She didn't denounce it, but now she won't have to say anything else about it.

To me, this feels way too much like Bob Corker and "Hey Harold, call me" for comfort. In both cases, the "denouncement" didn't come until well after everyone had seen the offending ad. Just enough time for it to have the desired effect, until you can come in and try to claim the moral high ground.

I'm not buying it.