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The Presidential election is still a year away, but I am already dreading the onslaught of the Clipboard Mafia downtown. These are the folks who will accost you on the street, clipboard and petitions in hand, and get in your face about signing to investigate the UFOs behind 9/11, or to get their 10th-party candidate on the Ohio ballot.
Nothing puts the brakes on their aggressiveness. They have interrupted me while I was explaining to my distraught daughter why her mother and I were splitting. They have come up to me while I was talking on my phone. (I replied with, "Do you see me talking on the phone?" and the guy gave me this pitiful Judas, with a kiss betrayest thou the Son of Man? look, as if hewas in the wrong.) They accost me while I'm engrossed in a book while waiting for a bus. I have made wide berths around people carrying clipboards, and found in more than one case I was treating a young legislative aide, or an administrative assistant running an errand, like a leper. To them, I apologize.
I have followed the recent threads on panhandling. The most aggressive and inebriated panhandler is more couth and respectful than many of the petition-wielders. Not even the most zealous Scientologist has been this disrespectful.
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