When senators won’t take your call

This nauseating NYT profile of David Koch does have one perhaps unintentionally revealing passage. The very rich personage in this puff piece is quoted here referring to a prank call made last month by a Koch impersonator to the governor of Wisconsin, a conversation in which Scott Walker earnestly reassured the fake-billionaire that he could be counted on to crush the public unions.

Mr. Koch joked that the call could cause him problems. “I was thinking to myself, ‘My God, if I called up a senator or a congressman to discuss something with them, and they heard ‘David Koch is on the line,’ they’d immediately say, ‘That’s that fraud again — tell him to get lost!’ ” he said with a laugh.

I wonder how many non-rich Americans presume that, in the natural course of things, they can simply ring up a senator in Washington to “discuss something with them”? This is the explanation for the Supreme Court’s rather curious insistence that giving money to political causes has to be viewed as a form of free speech. For without it, how can you be sure that your phone call to a senator will even be taken?

Update The new danger that his calls might be ignored seems to be an obsession now for David Koch. He said something very similar in a Boston Globe interview: the other day:

"Right now, if I make a call to some important person and say my name is David Koch, they’re probably going to reject the call, thinking I’m another fraudster."

I wonder which people qualify as unimportant?

crossposted at unbossed.com