Liars, Politicians, and Cheats, Oh, My!

One of my readers sent in a story from their small town newspaper that makes the partisan fighting in Washington, D.C. look like child’s play. Trisha said her town has an election coming up this fall that is threatening to split their small Midwestern community right down the middle. All of the various little power groups in town have been using the city’s small town newspaper to air their grievances. And now, to add fuel to the fire, even the paper has taken sides.

The editor is a rough old fellow who calls a spade a spade. Two weeks ago he ran an editorial calling for people to go to the polls and clean out city hall and start over. That would’ve been bad enough, but the crusty old newspaperman didn’t stop there. Oh no, he closed his editorial by saying that “it is the opinion of this newspaper that half of the town council members were nothing more than liars and cheats.”

As you may imagine, it got ugly. Everybody and their mama who had a loved one or a friend on the town council started emailing the paper and ringing the phone off the hook, demanding a retraction. There were even some threats to burn down the newspaper building. The next week, a block of text appeared in the paper beneath the word retraction, but I’ll let you decide who got the last word. The retraction read:

Last week this editorial staff stated its belief that half the members of the town council were liars and cheats. We would like to retract that statement. Half of the town council members of this town are not liars or cheats.

Hugs,
Shellie