My fellow Supervisor, Herschel Brown, has written a letter to the editor of the Inter-County Leader concerning my post relating to reducing the size of the County Board. Rather than tackling the meaningful issues that were raised in the post, however, Mr. Brown's letter focuses on my "Bozo" comment, which, in context, was obviously not intended to insult anyone presently serving on the Board or anyone who has served on the Board in the past. The sentence Mr. Brown finds so objectionable was included only to emphasize a point: If citizens are upset with the Board of Supervisors because they believe the Supervisors are incompetent or unqualified, reducing the size of the Board will do nothing to correct that situation. That's it.
Mr. Brown appears to be rather thin-skinned. Furthermore, lifting one sentence out of context to criticize in a letter to the editor (and not responding on the blog itself) suggests to me that he would rather mislead citizens of Polk County and incite ill-will than address the issues directly and on the merits.
A "Sounding Board" is not an authority on anything, but a place to air views. I fail to understand what makes Mr. Brown think that my having created this humble blog means that I consider myself an authority on anything.
I will be sending my own letter to the editor to respond to Mr. Brown's letter.
1 comment:
Mr. Brown's letter also appeared in the Polk County Ledger, and I wouldn't be surprised to find it in the Free Press and Sun this week. He seems to be taking a page from former Supervisor Bob Blake's playbook by writing regular letters to the editor. Up until now Brown has refrained from the type of personal attacks that Blake was infamous for, but that may be changing. That's unfortunate.
I understood what you were trying to say, Diane, and thought it was a good point: There are people who will never be happy with the county board, regardless of how small we make it. Those folks, the one who consider virtually *all* politicians to be "bozos", will never be happy until they achieve some sort of libertarian utopia in which there is no authority above the level of the individual.
Brown's campaign literature accused the previous board of "fleecing the taxpayers". I don't see how your use of the term "Bozo" is any more demeaning than that.
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