Hurricane Sandy and the Twitter Troll

On Tuesday night, as New Yorkers struggled to cope with the fury of Hurricane Sandy.

A Twitter account with the handle ComfortablySmug tried to cause even more fear.

By sending out a series of alarming false messages.

Now the person responsible has been revealed to be a hedge fund analyst, and a Republican operative.

Based on photos he censored and posted to the account but I found unedited elsewhere, @comfortablysmug is Shashank Tripathi, a hedge-fund analyst and the campaign manager of Christopher R. Wight, this year’s Republican candidate for the U.S. House from New York’s 12th congressional district.

For years, he’s been a prolific commenter at NYmag.com and a popular conservative presence on Twitter. In 2008, he penned an entry for the site’s popular sex diary feature that “detailed a week of obsession, rough sex, and Ambien.”

And he's apologized.

But some like the New Yorker's Adam Martin aren't buying it.

Yes, @Comfortablysmug takes "full responsibility for my actions" and "deeply regret[s] any harm or stress they may have caused," but fully half of this apology amounts to further campaigning for the candidate whose employ Tripathi just left: "It is my sincere hope that the voters of New York will see him based on his merits alone, and not my actions of the last 24 hours." That makes the whole "apology" sound a lot more like a political move than a legitimate expression of remorse.

And who can blame him? For who could possibly feel sorry for a guy like that one? Who would scare frightened people.

Or write this kind of garbage:

Consider this passage from the Sex Diary he wrote for Daily Intel: "My suspicion she has low self-esteem is confirmed once I'm basically fucking her face, which segues beautifully into rough sex. I'm satisfied by the thought this will probably leave her with bruises." 

And what more can you say eh? When you've finished vomiting. Except it HAD to be a Con.

For only a Con could be so ugly and cruel. You see it in the ghastly excretions of people like Ezra Levant. You see it in the faces of the twenty somethings that run the sinister Con War Room. You see it in the cold dead eyes of their monstrous leader.

For only a Con could fail to understand what the word "community" means. Which is of course, why we fight them.

And the good news? 

The Cons have no future. For the world needs people as callous and brutish as them, like it needs a hole in the head, or a ruptured levy.  

And thanks to the strength of community...people helping people.

Hurricane Sandy may have savaged it.

But the Big Apple lives eternal...

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