Former political candidate Krystal Ball is one of the new political commentators on MSNBC”s Dylan Ratigan Show. This time a year ago, Ball was challenging an incumbent Republican for a house district seat that included a little chunk of Prince William County in the Montclair area. Krystal Ball was just sticking a toe in the political water when a big bad alligator or two tried to nip it off.
The Washington Post:
For Ball, those two appearances book-ended a strange year-long journey: from little-known Virginia congressional candidate to infamous Internet sensation to professional pundit, opining on nearly every subject on the news.
Ball has become a fixture on MSNBC, with a freshly inked contract to serve as a “contributor” and go-to “Democratic strategist” on the network. She appears to have a bright future in the world of political media.
Celebrity works in funny ways, and Ball acknowledged she wouldn’t be on the right path now if she had not become famous for the wrong reasons a year ago.
“I don’t think I would have ended up going in this direction,” Ball said, if she had not been the subject of an online controversy. “Because that was what got me on to a lot of these programs and sort of got me in the loop, and then after the campaign was over, they just kept asking me back.”
Portrayed as ‘a party girl’
At this time last year, Ball was a 28-year-old political novice who was running an educational software company with her husband and launching an uphill campaign against Rep. Rob Wittman (R) in Virginia’s GOP-leaning 1st District, which stretches from Fredericksburg to Newport News.
Then risqué photos of Ball emerged on a pair of conservative blogs. Taken at a costume party when she was 22, the pictures show Ball and her ex-husband holding a sex toy.
The story was irresistible to the media: A young, attractive female candidate with a memorable name (her father, a physicist, wrote his doctoral dissertation on crystals) is undone by suggestive photos and the perils of the Internet.
Her candidacy, which had drawn almost no attention, suddenly moved into the national spotlight.
Ball’s response was quick and forceful: She blamed the story on sexism and a double standard for women who run for office. Instead of a congressional candidate, she lamented in a Huffington Post op-ed, “for millions of people around the world, I am a joke named Krystal Ball, a party girl or a whore.”
According to her official biography, which doesn’t shy away from the photo controversy, Ball’s name quickly became one of the most-Googled terms in the world. She appeared on MSNBC and Fox News.
Embarrassing as the photos were, Ball said she does not regret the incident.
“It did give me an opportunity to say something that I thought was really important, so in a way I’m kind of grateful for the opportunity to do that,” she said. “I feel very proud of how we handled it. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t just sort of hide in a corner. I didn’t deny that it was me.”
Krystal Ball did grab the story by the proverbial nads and looked it squarely in the eye. After all, she was at a private party with her very own husband, who considering the pictures, had a lot more to lose in the humiliation department than she did. They were young people acting silly. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, several bloggers who shall go unnamed exploited the find and published the pictures, raking in huge numbers of hits so people could look at a human reindeer on a leash with a plastic penis on his nose. [boys and their toys…tsk tsk tsk] Probably those most interested in the pictures had never been to a party where anyone drank anything but milk because the pictures were mildly humorous, not erotic.
So Krystal Ball has herself a new career and notoriety for being a political commentator. The blogs that set out for that gotcha moment didn’t even get the notoriety from the Washington Post. The blogs weren’t even named.
Here is Krystal Ball’s rebuttal from a year ago. We wish her success with her new career.
Perhaps Mrs. Ball will send a letter of appreciation and an autographed picture to the Dark Master. She could also offer some tips to the wannabe political pundit. I’m sure jealousy reigns supreme on the Dark Screen.
bwaaahahahahahahaha. either that or a lot of self kicking.
To think that the first fan club will be forming right here in PWC.
Oh my!!!! I wonder if the Dark Master would be interested in the crow receipes I posted previously. Or perhaps this will suffice:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
Krystal Ball was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The Dark Master was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes;
When down came a blackbird
And pecked off his nose.
funny George! Life is awesome, you just never know where the journey takes you.
I do wonder if Krystal sent a thank you bouquet 😉
Krystal Ball…..MSNBC…..Dylan Ratigan…….better leave this alone!
@pokie
bok bok bok
Just out of curiosity, have you watched Morning Joe?
@George S. Harris
I doubt the dark master has any inkling what crow tastes like.
I have a theory about all this….
Hee hee – I guess all that free publicity put Krystal Ball where the dark master would like to be.
@Moon-howler
I have watched “morning joe” maybe 1 or 2 times since it started. Usually because someone else had it on. These days I usually watch Fox Business in the AM. I like Don Imus and his sidekicks.
I like Morning Joe. It is informative and often has a representative from about any end of the political spectrum you could ask for. Most of the time I like Joe. He and I are not simpatico over reproductive rights though. Mika can be a pain sometimes when she goes off in left field. Pat Buchanan is often a guest and Willie Geist…well…since Jon Stewart froze the Willie Geist look in time, he has become immortal. He also broke his tail bone.