Just when I was going to take a little break from writing (until Election Day), the Newcastle News dropped in with two old friends.
I could practically swear that the Newcastle News told me that they had implemented a policy of publishing only one supporting letter to the editor, in total, for anyone's favorite council candidate, and only one negative one, during the election season. I'll have to check my e-mails to be 100% sure, but I'm 98% sure that this was their policy until apparently it began to look like their candidate, John Drescher, didn't have this election locked up, yet, as he should have with all of his advantages (including the support of the town newspaper that is going out of their way to help him). Now, it looks like the News is changing their policy in the middle of the ballgame and giving "Poor John" yet another helping hand by publishing another letter from one of his Planning Commission buddies, this time from Lord Rob, a.k.a. Rob Lemmon. Lord Rob, as you know, wants to go back to 1910 (you'll have to read an old N.P.R. post to get the joke). In Lord Rob's world, Newcastle would become one big gated community, and the Planning Commission would be the gatekeepers, of course. Lord Rob's vision of Newcastle 2035 looks a little more like Orwell's "1984" than Taft's 1910, but who's counting years when regression is back to the future.
-- Mark Greene, Candidate for Newcastle City Council, Position 6
P.S. : Incidentally, since I'm campaigning more intensely than usual these last few days, if anybody sends me an e-mail, it might take a day or two for me to respond. My apology, however.
[revised on 11/2/13]
Key phrases or words for link(s), above: old N.P.R. post
Recent N.P.R. post with Mark Greene's photo: Time to Vote.
Last day to mail in or drop-off ballots: Tues., Nov. 5th, 2013.
I wasn't planning on going over any of this publicly until this blatant changing of the News' policy, but even Drescher, himself, wasn't suppose to have his own letter published in the News back in June -- after the candidate filing in May -- as I was told that this was an oversight by the News, but in spite of their "oversight," my very own letter could not be published in their August edition because of the rule. The rule being, supposedly, that candidates for office cannot write for themselves during election season (apparently, on any topic). However, this isn't Major League Baseball where rules cannot simply be discarded or changed in the middle of a game, or even the middle of the season. After all, a newspaper doesn't necessarily have to follow rules, especially when they realize that a whole lot more eyes are going to see their own print than a critic's little blog. Even so, I'm done with the News.
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