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TeaCon 2011, The Good and the Bad

-By Warner Todd Huston

I’ll be here all day at TeaCon 2011 sponsored by Chicago’s WIND radio, ChampionNews.net, and the Chicago Tea Party. The good is that several notable personalities are here this weekend among them Andrew Breitbart and Glenn Beck. The bad? Well, there is a bit of a scandal involving one of the Tea Party leaders here that broke just as the Friday events were winding up.

Friday’s opening ceremonies were enjoyable, of course. WIND’s Big John Howell and Amy Jacobson emceed the evening entertainment. We were regaled by the comedy stylings of Steven Crowder and all were wound up by the straight talk and stream of conscientiousness of Andrew Breitbart. We heard some wonderful, patriotic music and all shared a beer or cocktail.

But there were hushed whispers during the night about Chicago Tea Party chief Steve Stevlic. It seems that gawker.com was tipped by Chicago-area rivals of Mr. Stevlic that back in June of 2010, Stevlic was detained by Chicago police for soliciting a prostitute.

Gawker also notes that months afterward on his Twitter account, Stevlic was pleased to attack Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. when it was revealed that he was whoring around on his wife.

The sex issue isn’t the bad part for Tea Party supporters, though. The sad thing is that Steve knew of his troubles but all these revelations have hit his supporters and followers completely unawares. He did not reveal his troubles even to the higher members of the Chicago Tea Party. Worse, I’ve spoken to several members of the upper level of the group who are worried that there are financial issues yet to be fully sussed out — they don’t want me to use their name because there are possible legal troubles here.

Few, it seems, have any clue where the Chicago Tea Party’s funds have gone, who has the accounts, what’s in them, etc.

It seems pretty clear that Mr. Stevlic should resign his position, hand over all the accounting to the lieutenants of the Chicago Tea Party and allow someone that can regain the confidence of activists to take the lead.

Sex isn’t the issue here. Trust is.

Certainly we wish Mr. Stevlic well and hope that he and his family get through these tough times. This has to be hard for them all.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.