So, this is the first of my “Dirty Laundry” posts. I don’t think there will be many. I mentioned this in a podcast earlier, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it then. I wanted to put anything at all that I could think of that someone might use against me at any point on the website for everyone to see. Basically, post my own opposition research on my website. I want to do this so that : a) there are no suprises, and b) I can earn your trust.

They will be filed in the blog under the category “dirty laundry”, and I will do them as I think of them. Today I will post the only two I can think of, both of which I have mentioned in earlier podcasts.

1) My Bench Warrant

When I was in college, I was driving just about every weekend from San Diego (where I was attending UCSD), to San Luis Obispo (where Jessica was attending Cal Poly SLO) to visit the lovely woman who would eventually be my wife. Anyhow, one morning I was driving rather too quickly along the 101 South, very near where they shot the recent movie Sideways actually, and I got pulled over (for good reason). So, I got my ticket and I lost the thing they sent me in the mail. The problem was that I couldn’t remember what county I had gotten my ticket in. I knew it was between SLO and Santa Barbara, so I called Santa Barbara County and asked if Scott Chacon had a ticket there and received the telephone version of a blank stare. So, eventually I missed my court date, my mother who works for the Sheriff’s department let me know quite irately that there was a bench warrant in my name, and I found the county and paid the ticket. I don’t know how this comes off in blog form, but in person this is often an amusing story. I hope you all can forgive me.

2) Scott the Republican

When I was in high school, my Government teacher made everyone in the class register to vote. She handed out a sheet of paper that had all the party one-liners on it, and had us choose one and register as that. As I had never really been exposed to politics in the household, I choose my party based on the one-liner. ‘Republican’ sounded good to me – ‘old fashioned values’, ‘low taxes’; whatever it was, it was catchy. When in that class we were asked to choose sides in topics for debate and I was the only one in the class who would voluntarily choose to defend gay marriage and oppose the death penalty, I believe in retrospect that perhaps that would have been a good time for my teacher to have pulled me aside and explained the possible confusion in my registration decision. However, that was not done, and I remained registered for many years after. Initially, because I did not remember how I had registered, and later because I liked getting all of the Republican mailers and literature. I felt at the time, as I do still, that it was interesting to know what the people who disagree with me think, and why they think that. I also enjoyed the opportunity to vote in the Republican primary for John McCain. How many other Democrats can say they got to vote against George Bush three times? In any case, despite the fact that I have never voted for any Republican (against a Democrat), I was registered as one for many, many years. This comes up because I found this in a book today :

So, there you go. For better or for worse, you will always get the truth from me. What a concept.

Update (05/25): I edited this post slightly to fix some spelling errors that were pointed out to me.