Mistaken identity

My e-mail in-box here at work has been filling with questions wondering if I was in Philadelphia over the weekend.

The reason being, someone else named Michael Rovito got Gov. Sarah Palin to directly contradict Republican presidential candidate John McCain at a restaurant in the City of Brotherly Love.

According to CBS News, Palin made a stop to pick up a couple of cheesesteaks when a Temple University student named Michael Rovito approached her to ask her thoughts on the Pakistan situation.

Long story short, Palin ended up being asked by this Rovito fellow if the United States should pursue cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan, if need be.

Palin answered in the affirmative: “If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said in the CBS article.

CBS was quick to point out that answer contradicts McCain’s position on the matter. During last Friday’s debate with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, McCain chastised the Illinois senator for saying he’d be willing to cross into Pakistan to kill terrorists.

“You don’t say that out loud,” McCain shot back at Obama, suggesting the idea was naïve.

Where I come into this is having the same name of the man who made news by asking Palin the question. As luck would have it, I’m also a reporter covering Palin for Palin’s hometown newspaper.

Suddenly, some bloggers posited the “liberal” media had sent me to Philly in an attempt to make Palin look bad.

“Did a graduate student named Michael Rovito really engage Palin in dialog? Or was he a plant, and if so, by whom? A Michael Rovito writes for the MAT-SU (Valley) FRONTIERSMAN, a Wasilla, Alaska paper. That cannot be a coincidence,” one commentator wrote on the CBS article.

My favorite, though not appreciated, comment comes from one blogger who attempted to lightheartedly translate my Italian last name.

“May I also note, like the lunatic left I am, that Rovito sounds Italian for Rove,” the blogger said, referencing Republican strategist Karl Rove.

The mainstream media is slowly catching on too. I got an e-mail from a CNN producer this morning looking for comment as to what I was doing at the cheesecake shop if I were, in fact, the Michael Rovito in Philadelphia.

Well, rest assured, with a heated mayoral race in Wasilla and the Mat-Su Valley’s steady stream of its own news, I was not sent there just to ask one question.

Besides, after growing up in a big city, I try to avoid going to them at all costs.

Read the CBS story here: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/27/politics/fromtheroad/entry4483110.shtml

— Michael Rovito, reporter.