A Roleplaying "Nerd" Politician?

[TarionzCousin]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/florida-republican-jake-rush-comes-out-as-huge-nerd.html

Florida Congressional Candidate Comes Out As Huge Role-playing Nerd

By Joe Coscarelli

Jake Rush, a 35-year-old attorney and former sheriff's deputy, is challenging tea partier Representative Ted Yoho in Florida's 3rd Congressional District. In his spare time, Rush wears a lot of costumes and goes by names like "Chazz Darling" and "Staas van der Winst." But it's totally not creepy, he insists, almost convincingly. Republicans in the south may choose to disagree.

What Rush calls his "hobby activities" were revealed by a local blogger, Peter Schorsch, who played up the "gothic-punk" live-action role player community (LARPers) and its darker aspects, including "Satanic symbolism," book burning, and vampires.

In response, Rush released a very long press release headlined, "Jake 'Shakespeare' Rush Shoots Straight on Gaming and Theatre Hobbies," including the above photo.

"As a straight shooter, yes, I play and have played video games, role playing games, board games, Yahtzee, Clue, and I have acted in dozens of theatre productions," says Rush. "Any cursory review of the Internet will show that I have played heroes and villains."

"As a practicing Christian, I am deeply offended that the opposing campaign and their supporters would take a gaming and theatre hobby and mischaracterize it," Rush continues. "The very definition of acting is expressing ideas and thoughts that are not your own, just like I don't believe I am MacBeth, which I have played, I am none of the characters."

I deleted the last paragraph from the quote as it might not be grandma-friendly.

 

[Kramodlog]

DC and Marvel characters side-by-side offend me.

 

[Zander]

There's an article about this on the BBC News site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26862462

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Even though nerd culture is gaining more mainstream acceptance these days, some of his LARP quotes* are really adult themed and vile- they could really cost him among those who don't understand the hobby.








* assuming, of course, those were all LARP quotes.

 

[Zombie_Babies]

Well, LARP is pretty awful so that alone should keep him out of office. I mean, who hasn't seen that 'lightning bolt! lightning bolt!' video or whatever. dood could have been involved in 2G1C kind of stuff and had less people slam his hobby.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

He is a politician... in Florida. If the worst thing they could find about him is that he LARPs, he should be automatically given the seat he is running for. Compared to the stuff other politicians in Florida get caught doing, this guy not a bad choice.