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Matt Gobush, DemocratMeet Joe Lieberman's new communications director.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 6:51 PM ET

Chatterbox is a Democrat because (among other reasons) Democrats are the party of toleration. A small but telling illustration is the name of Sen. Joe Lieberman's new communications director. It's Matt Gobush. Can you imagine a Republican ever hiring a communications aide named Jason Yayclinton? The surname would be an automatic deal breaker, and he'd be shunned reflexively, like a runt shoved from the litter. But Democrats don't behave that way. To be sure, Gobush was hired for Lieberman's Senate staff, not the presidential campaign (where Gobush's predecessor, Dan Gerstein, now works). But Gobush was Al Gore's national security spokesman during the 2000 campaign. (More recently, he's been press secretary to Rep. Tom Lantos.)

Gobush's name was noted by the Wall Street Journal as early as 1991, when he organized a pro-Clinton student group at Georgetown University. As you would expect, Gobush's own line on his name is that it's widely misinterpreted. "It's a exhortation for our current president to leave office," he told Chatterbox.

Chatterbox isn't buying it, but he applauds Lieberman's embrace of a man whose very name constitutes a not-very-subliminal campaign slogan for the opposition. It's hardly Gobush's fault. However, in the interest of self-preservation, Chatterbox has an idea how to even things out a bit. Lieberman should launch a nationwide search to find, and hire, anyone with the last name, Screwbush. Once that person is on staff, Lieberman can assess that person's abilities and find something he or she can do.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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