What The Easleys Forgot (Subtitled What The Journalists Forgot)

The N&O's Ruth Sheehan has a positively sappy editorial up on Mike and Mary Easley. Oh woe is us! If only they had not forgotten who they were and where they came from.

Oh, you mean like John & Elizabeth Edwards?

Here's an excerpt:

When my oldest son was born, Mary knit him a hat shaped like a strawberry.

In December 2001, Mike Easley appointed my husband to be chairman of the state Employment Security Commission. That's the reason I didn't write about Easley during most of his two terms.

How very progressive. I bet John Robinson would pat you on the back for your journalistic ethics.

I've learned to channel my rage through writing on this blog, so here's my response (posted as a comment on the editorial):

"I didn't write about Easley during most of his two terms . . . I'm not one of the longtime Easley bashers who thought he didn't do a darn thing but crash a few race cars during his years in the governor's mansion . . . For those of us who liked and admired the Easleys, the last few months of revelations have been hard to comprehend."

I would have liked to have admired the Easleys.

But from my view in the cheap seats of once idealistic/enthusiastic public service, I didn't get cute strawberry hats for the baby I will never have because I was too mired down in litigation that NEVER would have happened if ANYONE in the Hunt-Sleazely administrations had done their jobs.

Instead, I was fed to the lions . . . largely because people like you could not see beyond what you wanted to see . . . and could not write about them.

It's time for the lions to choke . . . and Rome to fall.

I "bash" the Easleys because they RICHLY DESERVE it . . . and then some.

They are entitled posers.

I ran out of character space, took a breath and posted again:

I'm still marvelling over this editorial.

Your husband got a job and your baby got a hat.

Maybe you should have turned those things down and started writing.

Maybe, just maybe, it's the journalists who forgot who they were and what they were about.

I paid dearly because I didn't.

I'm in this blogosphere because (back in 2005) a newspaper editor invited me. The N&R's John Robinson made all kinds of promises about stories getting told that hadn't otherwise been told.

Alas, that ruse was up pretty quickly.

The biggest problem I've had are so-called starry-eyed, "progressive" "journalists" like Ruth Sheehan.

In Asheboro, it's David Renfro, publisher of the Courier Tribune . . . husband of Bonnie (head guru at Randolph County Economic Development) and good buddy to Bob Morrison. Indeed, the ONE time the (weekly) Randolph Guide published anything about my story (this would be one of the times I swallowed all my pride and draped poster-board over my shoulders - in order to protest in front of Randolph Hospital), I've been informed that Renfro marched over to the Guide's offices and reamed out the publisher there.

Telling this story would not be good for "business" in Asheboro & Randolph County.

Of course, doing it the Renfro's way got Asheboro listed in Forbes magazine - and not in a good way.

And don't even get me started on John Robinson . . . or Edward Cone of the Cones (no ulterior motives for being a total jerk there).

Whatever.