Fun with Rick

All the attention today has been about Santorum's radio ads complaining about some sort of made up invasion of his privacy. He cares about his privacy but he doesn't care about the privacy of anyone else. Just a side note, his first media buy doesn't say why you should vote for him, but he says the other guy is a bum.

A tip to KP for this gem from York Blog:

It shouldn't have come as any surprise. Santorum has some odd views about privacy - mostly that people have no right to it.

Which, when you think about it, is an awfully weird thing for a person who calls himself a conservative to believe.....

To sum up, Santorum thinks people do not have a right to privacy. And he thinks that the government collecting our phone records is not a violation of whatever privacy we can expect to have, which is none, as far as he's concerned.

It's kind of confusing.

So I called Santorum's office. I thought someone there could try to straighten this out.

But then, I figured, if Santorum doesn't think the government collecting all of our phone records violates our privacy, he certainly wouldn't mind giving me all of his phone records so I could analyze them and put them in the paper.

I'm sure his phone records are a lot more interesting than mine. I only call for pizza now and then. He's probably calling lobbyists and fundraisers and, maybe, 1-900 numbers to phone lines where you can talk dirty to Rin Tin Tin.
I got his communications director, Robert Traynham, on the phone. Traynham offered a clarification. He said he thought his boss was speaking in the context of the government asking the phone companies to hand over records of every phone call made in America.

OK, but he did say it wasn't violation of privacy. So I asked Traynham if I could have records of all of his boss's phone calls.

He didn't understand the question.

I tried explaining, saying that since Santorum doesn't think it's an invasion of privacy, he wouldn't mind releasing records of his phone calls.

Traynham said, "Not at this time."

And then he said it was "a trick question," asking whether Santorum was planning to let everybody see his phone records.
I didn't think it was a trick question.
He did.

And he thought it was a "leading question."
And then he said he wouldn't "dignify" my questions with answers.
That happens to me a lot.
So from this, we can conclude a few things.

Either Santorum doesn't really understand the meaning of the word "privacy."
Or he thinks he's entitled to it, while you're not.