The Battle of Asheboro's "Brand": "City of Connections" Or "Socially Incestuous" - You Decide

Ray Criscoe, Editor of Asheboro's Courier Tribune, has an exceptionally high opinon of himself and his own ideas.

On Wednesday, much like the leaders of the City of Asheboro, I had my own "lukewarm response" to the City's latest "brand name" ("Home and Heart" being kind of a bust for the doctor who had hers skewered courtesy of Mr. Criscoe's very important friends - friends who must be protected from the consequences of their actions at ALL COSTS).

But as I said in the first post, I simply can't hold it against the poor girl who is now in charge of "marketing" Asheboro to the outside world.  She's not got a lot to work with.  That's the way it is when a town has been sucked dry.

Anyway, our man Ray, making like George Bush (I do miss him these days) and Sarah Palin, thought the term sounded too "educationese".  So working with his tight circle of reporters (who cannot seem to hold pens upright - or who walk out of City Council meetings at inopportune moments in order to count their money) Ray came up with his own suggestion:

"Asheboro:  City of Connections"

And what do you know?  Everyone present LOVED Ray's idea.  Why frowning eyebrows turned upside down (it sounds like bad Dr. Seuss)! 

Ray's idea was PERFECT!  It was a "proud statement".  Not quite an "active" phrase, but "a tease".  It makes no mention of our tired, old zoo, and establishes that Asheboro is a "city" not a town (like that pitiful Seagrove just 15 miles south - a place I'm particularly fond of that our Ray apparently doesn't want to be connected to).

Oh, and (best of all) it makes people wonder . . . what kind of connections?

Well, boys and girls, I can help with that.  For it brings us back to the "right people" whose deft stewardship of our town put it on Forbes 2008 list of "Fastest Dying Towns" . . . the kind of stewardship that has residents now debasing themselves to Reader's Digest in order to get $40,000 to upgrade a theater that only the "right people" use.

These are the kind of connections that allowed a home-grown Pediatrician in public service to be thrown out on the street for standing up to the threats of MORONS and saving a baby's life . . . the kind of connections that winked and nodded while said MORONS turned around and (unsuccessfully) sued her for "libel" because she had the guts to tell the truth to the state and Federal governments she served . . . the kind of connections that allowed the MORONS to keep their jobs, despite repeatedly LYING UNDER OATH in order to get their way . . . their way including one of them walking away last year with a $700,000/year salary.

These are the kind of connections that let hard-working, productive public servants be fired for bogus reasons, because the County can't figure out out to pay them.

These are the kinds of connections that destroy the lives of city employees because they know something the public wasn't supposed to know.

These are the kinds of connections that will let our "city" be turned into a regional trash dump for money.

These are the kind of connections that allowed N.C. Commerce Secretary/former Asheboro Councilman Keith Crisco to hob and nob former Community One CEO, Mike Miller (he's the guy whose stewardship of a once-stable institution allowed it to lose almost $250 million dollars in three years), into the President's chair at Pfeiffer College - a job he was uniquely unqualified for.

These are the kinds of connections that allow public money to be used to the disadvantage of private business owners . . . and for the people sitting on "non-profit" boards to plead privacy and close their books when a member of the public wants to know who they are and what's in the books.

These are the kinds of connections that allow local developers to walk away from obligations with no consequences whatsoever (they could just dump the road-built-to-minimum-specifications on the city when the neighborhood got annexed)

These are the kinds of connections that have people from all walks of life in Asheboro now e-mailing and calling ME (???) to tell me their stories . . . as opposed to seeking out the so-called "journalists" at our USELESS, SUCK-UP, YES-CORPORATE-MASTER-ANYTHING-YOU-SAY-CORPORATE-MASTER newspaper.

These are the kind of connections that keeps Ray's seat at the Courier warm when he and his reporters zombies wouldn't recognize a story if it bit them in their folksy tushes.

Oh, and lest we forget, Asheboro's got a "high cotton" connection in Raleigh now . . . courtesy of religiously insensitive, sexist, puerile, dead-wrong-with-his-"facts" and NOT FUNNY, Harold Brubaker.

So yeah, I can understand why Ray thinks it's brilliant.  But Ray is a putz.  He's never understood that a town that only hears the "yes-men" - and does not tolerate dissent - or expose/cut out the rot - is doomed to die a slow, ugly death - no matter how many Interstates/drug routes run through it.  And Asheboro is THERE. 

You simply cannot fix what's wrong in the present unless you talk about what's been done wrong in the past, and that's what a newspaper is for.

Runnng your town like Stalin is NOT something to be proud of.

But in Asheboro, you can't get past the happy, upbeat headlines fronting the paywall. Look forward.  Skip over the bodies.  Move on along, nothing to see.

And that's what outsiders are doing.

So I'm thinking that a variation on a previous theme here at Houscalls ("Asheboro:  Incestuously Incestuous"), gets Ray's "message" across in a far more accurate and memorable manner.

But, much like all the "national attention" the Forbes article got us, I'm still not sure it's memorable in a good way;)