Facts and accountability

On the morning of the election in our fair city last week, an anonymous (to me, anyway; I have no idea who sent it) e-mail was sent out to some Gladstone residents, ostensibly to support a particular school board candidate. Among the smears, half-truths, misleading statements and outright lies in this long, virtually unreadable missive entitled "vote for a change" from "werteachers4life@yahoo.com" was this gem:

"Neighbor Vicki Baker told candidate Janet Simmons her children were rude and weren't allowed to play with Vicki Bakers children anymore and went on to tell Janet that her neighbors all hated her and Vicki hoped Janet and her family moved out of Gladstone and Janet should have never thought about running against Leslie Everson with out telling her. What kind of behavior is this? Janet was so scared and intimidated by Vicki she thought about pulling her name from running for a Board position and that is why she isn't in the voters pamphlet. She was too intimidated and distraught to file."

If you were able to follow that, congratulations; it's like Vanessa Huxtable channeling William Faulkner. But more to the point, it's sadly lacking much basis in reality. Make no mistake, Vicki can handle her own fights, especially with people unwilling to own up to the words they write. So less to defend her honor and more in hopes that this writer (if I'm not being too generous) would see the error of his or her ways, I chose that day to respond as follows:

I have no idea who you are, but you've professed to be interested in facts and accountability [this was a significant theme of the e-mail], so you should probably reconsider at least this portion of the "vote for a change" e-mail you sent out this morning...

Point by point:

- "Vicki Baker told candidate Janet Simmons her children were rude and weren't allowed to play with Vicki Bakers children anymore..." Never happened. What actually happened was completely unrelated to the campaign and Janet's candidacy. My son had observed what he felt like was rude behavior by Janet's boys toward his sister. He's very protective of her and suggested to her that maybe she shouldn't play with them. That's it. Vicki never said any such thing to our kids nor to Janet.

- "...went on to tell Janet that her neighbors all hated her and Vicki hoped Janet and her family moved out of Gladstone" Never happened. What she actually said was that she'd discussed the matter with a couple neighbors who expressed surprise that Janet hadn't told Leslie she intended to run for the seat. She also said she'd heard from a third party that Janet (and family?) had considered moving out of the neighborhood, which might be a good idea if she doesn't like her neighbors.

- Told Janet she "should have never thought about running against Leslie Everson with out telling her." Yeah, that's true. [And rightly so.] Janet and Leslie live almost across the street from each other; directly telling someone who has been a good and helpful neighbor for a number of years that you intend to run against her for the school board would seem to be the courteous thing to do. But Janet didn't extend that courtesy, and, as you say, what kind of behavior is that?

So because most of these things never happened, I'm quite unclear as to what role Vicki had in making Janet so intimidated and distraught that she couldn't bring herself to file information for the voter's guide, and I really don't see what an e-mail supporting Joe has to do with Janet or Vicki. But I invite you to share the above facts with your original "vote for a change" distribution list.

Did you follow that? This e-mail message overall wasn't even about Janet, much less Vicki, who isn't running for anything except groceries. Why the writer (there's that word again) thought this paragraph bolstered the argument in favor of voting for Joe is a mystery. Anyway, that was last Tuesday. As of last night I hadn't heard back from werteachers4life@yahoo.com or otherwise heard that they had taken any corrective action. A reminder seemed to be in order:

Have you sent out the corrections...to your “vote for a change” distribution list? You’ll recall that you’ve come out (though anonymously, as far as I can tell) as strongly favoring accountability and publicizing the facts. The decent and accountable thing for you to do would be to share this factual information with your list in order to correct the misinformation—someone less charitable might call them lies—you disseminated last week. So that I know you’ve chosen to do the right thing, be sure to CC: me when you send it out.

It's 24 hours later, and werteachers4life@yahoo.com has not mustered the will to do the right thing. Mind you, whatever the nature and depth of their disagreement, Janet and Vicki have apparently both already set it aside and moved on. It's too bad this person has failed, even anonymously, to own up to the facts and correct his or her libelous message.