A Curse on Me
When I went to the City County building Monday night to cover the usual city hall stuff I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to write about. I had a number of things on the agenda to pick from: police department reforms, the merger with the Lawrence Fire Department, the ban on the sale synthetic marijuana, i.e. “spice”. I was particularly interested in whether most of the usual council partisan bickering over these issues would be cast aside for the greater policy debate, but it turns out the measures all passed overwhelmingly.
So what is a political pundit to write about, here’s one, getting cursed at by an elected official. At the start of the meeting I was in the hallway and heading to get a copy of the Council agenda, I ran into City-Council Member Bill Oliver, we did the polite head nod, when I asked him (apparently a big mistake on my part) whether he and his friends had found a job for Chantay Chandler, Brandon Johnson’s mother? Brandon Johnson, as you recall, was the 15-year old victim of alleged police excessive force earlier this year. His mother has been out of work for months and has gotten very little assistance from the people taking advantage of her son’s situation.
When I asked my question, I was expecting the usual polite dismissal. Instead I get, “What the f**** are you talking about?! Are you trying to start something?!” Wow! It’s not everyday I get the f-bomb thrown at me by an elected official. In fact, the last public official to call me up and curse me out was Democratic Chairman Ed Treacy. That man sounded like a Redd Foxx record.
I’m not quite sure why Oliver got so upset. All I did was ask a question. A simple yes or no would have been sufficient. But then again I could see if I was the one who had engaged in political posturing and tried to take advantage of a tragedy and score points because I haven’t offered a viable alternative vision for the city and I represented one of the most crime-ridden and economically depressed council districts in the city.
Well, come to think of it, if I were Bill Oliver I’d curse a lot too, but it would be directed at myself.
