COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

Three minutes and twenty seconds into the following video of the June 4 City Council meeting, Vice Mayor Carroll not only makes public her opposition to a proclamation recognizing Humanist Week, she engages in verbal jousting with a citizen, a behavior that is also signature Tracy Carroll. In what is perhaps a Freudian slip, Mayor Craig Fletcher has taken to calling citizens before the Council during public comment time by saying, “Next victim.”  

As of today, the Press Journal has yet to report on a recall initiative now underway to remove Mayor Craig Fletcher and Vice Mayor Tracy Carroll from office because of offensive statements they made during the June 4 City Council meeting.

Carroll and Fletcher refused to support what could have been a routine proclamation for Humanist Recognition Week.  In rejecting the proclamation, Carroll inaccurately asserted that all Humanists are atheists, while Fletcher said he would not support a group that “does not believe in Jesus Christ as their savior.”

For many Press Journal readers, the first news they received of the recall effort may have come in the form of a guest column by Carroll published in the Saturday print edition of the newspaper.

As is her style, Carroll took a dismissive tone in her Press Journal guest column, featured prominently on the newspaper’s op-ed page. Through her signature one-dimensional view of reality, Carroll stacks one offense on top of another by arguing that those who claim to be offended by her arrogance, and by her refusal to acknowledge the hurt her comments may have caused, are simply unsupportive of her approach to selling the city’s electric system to Florida Power & Light.

Is Carroll seriously suggesting the letter of concern issued by more than a dozen local ministers was motivated by a desire to derail the sale of Vero Electric?

The following commentary was first published July 11:

Is local press soft pedaling recall story?

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.