Are there still people out there channeling Scarpinato?

by David Safier

This isn't a big deal, but it's interesting and kind of . . . well, interesting.

From today's Political Notebook in the Star, written by Andrea Kelly and Rhonda Bodfield:

Gov. Jan Brewer was probably wishing, oh, sometime around 5:34 p.m. Wednesday, that she had the flux capacitor from "Back to the Future." 

But even with no DeLorean to erase her debate meltdown . . .

Apologies to Kelly and/or Bodfield if I'm wrong, but doesn't that "Back to the Future" reference sound a little too much like a geeky/nerdy/Trekkie guy thing for the two of them? I could be wrong, but . . .

There's this guy, Daniel Scarpinato, who wrote the Political Notebook for awhile and is the perfect age and geek/nerd/Trek level to make a reference like that.

Let's see what Scarpinato once wrote when he handled the Notebook duties:

Let's take a trip with the help of our flux capacitor to a parallel universe.

It's a place where John McCain never said . . .

And here's something Scarp said in July as Paton's mouthpiece:

"But unless [Giffords] can buy the flux capacitor from the movie 'Back to the Future' and go back and change her votes, she will not be reelected this November." [Bold face added for emphasis in the three quotes]

When Scarp was Paton's communication guy, it sometimes sounded like he was still on staff at the Star, with his campaign talking points included in the Notebook almost verbatim.

Now it sounds like the Notebook writers are either digging up old Scarpinato references, maybe because they were just so damn good — "Not!" to rely on a pop reference myself — or maybe because those morning, over-coffee chats I imagined Scarpinato having with his old Star buddies are still going on.

Either way: Kelly, Bodfield, you're both better than Scarpinato.