COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

The two newspapers most zealously supporting the sale of the electric system, the island tabloid and the local daily, were both slow to report and then quick to dismiss outrageously bigoted statements made at the June 4 City Council meeting by Mayor Craig Fletcher and Vice Mayor Tracy Carroll.

In explaining why he would not vote for a proclamation for Humanist Recognition Week, Fletcher insisted that he could not support a group that does not profess faith in Jesus Christ as their savior.  Taking a more ecumenical approach, Carroll said her Internet research led her to conclude humanists are “atheists,” and thus undeserving of a proclamation.

Carroll and Fletcher’s comments created a brief firestorm when a video of the June 4 City Council meeting went viral on the Internet.

It took the island weekly, an incendiary tabloid typically drawn to controversy, two weeks to acknowledge the Mayor’s and Vice Mayor’s inflammatory statements, and then only in a general way.  In glossing over the facts, the paper drew on a quote from scripture, as it urged the community to move on.

Press Journal editorial page editor, Larry Reisman, was satisfied to interpret an email sent to him from Craig Fletcher’s personal computer as a genuine and sincere public apology, and this, despite the fact that the previous day Fletcher had dug in his heels, describing himself as a “Bible thumping Baptist.”

A few days later, Carroll told columnist Russ Lemmon she regretted if anyone took offense at her assertion that all Humanists are atheists, but she stopped short of retracting her statement.

When the Council met again on June 18, neither the Mayor nor the Vice Mayor had a word to say publicly in the way of explanation or apology.

Carroll and Fletcher seem about as contrite as the young woman who went to her priest one Monday morning confessing that several times over the weekend she had enjoyed the company of her fiancé.  The priest told the young woman to say the rosary three times and to suck on a lemon.  “Saying the rosary three times will absolve you of your sin,” said the priest, “and sucking on a lemon will take that smile off your face.”

Now that a group led by civic activist Linda Hillman is conducting a petition drive in an effort to recall Carroll and Fletcher from office, the local press, especially the island tabloid, is dismissing the recall drive as nothing more than an attempt to derail the sale of the electric system.

Hillman insists she and her group are driven by a higher purpose, namely to rid the City Council of two members they believe have shown a pattern of being dismissive and verbally abusive to members of the public who come before Council.

If the island tabloid and the local daily want the community to believe their inclination to soft pedal this story arises not out of their own political motivations, but out of their deep and abiding orientation toward reconciliation, then they should at the same time be willing to accept Hillman and her group’s explanation that their recall petition effort is motivated, not by politics, but by principle.