The silence on Tacy: Gondo's Greg Giles buys into city hall's act of misdirection
After reading the Gondo's coverage on city hall's silence about Rick Tacy's illness, I can't decide if editor Greg Giles is irresponsible or just plain dumb
-- John Patten, 09/02/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Testify
A week or two ago, Venice Gondolier editor Greg Giles penned these words in an article about Steve Albee's publication, The Business Chronicle:

His [Steve Albee's] publisher's message drew a response from Venice resident Pat McDonald, who often testifies before city council on the issue.

While at first glance it may seem like a small thing, I had to call Giles up to give him the definition of the word "testifies." The misuse above belies a lack of procedural understanding in the very basics of how government, particularly how our city government, works. People do not testify before council unless they are sworn in during a quasi-judicial hearing. You can testify in court, you can testify in church, but you don't testify by simply speaking before council, you simply speak.

Giles stated that he didn't know the distinction until I pointed it out to him.

Gondo goes pro-choice on the truth
That conversation apparently foreshadowed today's abortion of an article on Councilman Rick Tacy's recent illness.

The issue never was Tacy's illness, nor was it that anyone was calling for his resignation (nobody was to my knowledge). The issue was the six weeks of silence from city hall on the matter as though Tacy had never existed, the speculation that was created as a direct result of news vacuum created by that silence, and the secret contingency plans for replacing Tacy that were going on within the CQG and, to some extent, within city hall itself.

It's a delicate difference that makes all of the difference in how the subsequent tale is told, a subtlety that is apparently lost on Giles and his newspaper, in spite of the fact that this is now the third article I've had to write to spell it all out.

Giles' article is so filled with errors that I am compelled to go through it paragraph by paragraph. I haven't had to do this since Julian Pecquet at the Herald-Trib did his famed botch job on the FAA shade meetings. Shortly after publication of the critique, Pecquet was sacked by the Herald-Trib.

OK, so here we go, paragraph by paragraph. Pay attention, Greg, there might be a test on this.

The very first paragraph sets the tone, as Marty Black has successfully duped Giles into misreading the situation. Giles never notices and thus never bothers to ask the same questions that I was asking.

Disgusting behavior. Disturbing comments. That's how City Manager Marty Black described those calling for Council Member Rick Tacy to step down.

Black's disgust would be justified if anyone had actually asked for Tacy to step down. To my knowledge, no one has. Giles fails to notice this.

Tacy is recuperating from surgery back in July, and has missed three consecutive council meetings.

Some political gadflies recently predicted Tacy will step down, but only after council elections are held in November so the other members can appoint his successor.

No such prediction was ever made. However I did suspect, and have only just confirmed in the last couple of days, that members of the CQG were discussing the possibility of Tacy's resignation and were making contingency plans on who they would be instructing council to appoint to replace Tacy.

It is my present understanding that those plans have been scuttled, but I have yet to confirm that part of the story.

The Gondo's misquote and misattribution has to be deliberate

HOW GILES QUOTED THIS WEB SITE:
According to John Patten's Gonzo-style Web blog on veniceflorida.com, "This is a replay of three years back when Councilwoman Virginia Warren became terminally ill with cancer. Like this present scenario, Warren's illness took a turn for the worse in the months and weeks leading up to the election filing date. Warren managed to (barely) attend just enough meetings to beat the election calendar before passing away, which allowed Fred Hammett to be picked by council as an appointee rather than the voters selecting a candidate. Hammett took office on December 1, 2003, less than one month after the 2003 election. He has served three terms without ever being on the ballot."
-- Tacy's absence sparks discourse, Venice Gondolier Sun, 09/02/07

WHAT THIS WEB SITE ACTUALLY PUBLISHED:
"To Levine, this is a replay of three years back when Councilwoman Virginia Warren became terminally ill with cancer.... [above accurately duplicated text removed]... Hammett took office on December 1, 2003, less than one month after the 2003 election. He has served three years on council without having his name appear on a ballot."
-- Is Tacy out or in?, Venice Florida! dot com, 08/26/07

1.) Giles has grossly misquoted what I wrote by changing just a couple of key items in the quoted text. Given the fact that one would have to cut and paste the text and then go in and manually change the words in order for them to appear as Giles has misquoted them, it would be pretty hard to accidentally make that kind of a misquote. In fact, given the amount of text that Giles got exactly right, I'd go so far as to say that it would be impossible to accidentally make that kind of misquote. In journalistic circles, that's damned near unforgivable.

In the above quoted paragraph, I was paraphrasing an argument made by Herb Levine, not me, and I attributed it as such. The Gondo stripped out the attribution, making it look like I was positing the possible scenario that was being posed by Levine. Secondly, I clearly wrote that Hammett served three years, not three terms.

If the Gondo has a reasonable explanation for this, I'd love to hear it.

2.) This web site isn't a blog. What the hell is it with print-only journalists stuck in an archaic news format that is only a few years away from being extinct? Anything that's not written by them that appears on a computer screen has to be a blog? Do any of them even know what a blog is?

There is nothing blog-like about Venice Florida! dot com. The layout, the software used, the browser delivery-methods, the style of writing is all completely different. This web site has been around for over ten years, most of that time in its present form, which pre-dates the existence of blogs. Moreover, I am not a blogger. I was writing and reporting news for various radio stations (back when radio news really mattered) and a couple of music magazines when Giles was still was pooping in his diapers from laughter at watching Barney the purple dinosaur.

Giles referring to this site as a blog is about as accurate as my referring to Giles as a transvestite. By the way, Greg: those shoes don't go with that purse.

What's really funny is that I had to show Giles how to use his web browser to open up the message board -- he didn't realize that those orange thingies at the top of this page are buttons until I told him. I'm dead serious -- he had no frickin' idea.

OK, back to today's fish-wrap

Hammett found the commentary offensive.

After the way Hammett glided into his present office and the way in which he has performed his duties so far, Hammett should find greater offense in a mirror. More on that as the upcoming elections draw nearer.

Black called it "immoral to be asking for a replacement."

I agree. In fact, that was one of the main points that I was making -- I suspected that some CQG folks behind the scenes were making contingency plans to do exactly that (as it turns out, I was right), which is why, in the absence of a response from Black,  I raised the possibility as a not-so-subtle warning not to do it.

Due to Black and Hammett's faux moral outrage, I am deducing that I was right in thinking that the knowledge of such contingency plans had spread to city hall (that and one other confirming piece of information that I am still not at liberty to write about). My asking about it publicly embarrassed the crap out of them, which explains why I didn't get a return call when I asked when Tacy would be returning to work and why city hall exploded in denial about the CQG contingency plans.

Sometimes you don't get the truth unless you rattle the tree to see what falls out. It's a dangerous tactic unless you are pretty certain that you are on solid ground. As it turned out, I didn't have to rattle all that hard this time -- I barely touched the tree and stuff started falling out of it like it was in an earthquake.

There wasn't even a press release about Tacy's illness or about Tacy going into the hospital. That's not normal.

"If you're that uncaring about someone with a physical (problem), what does that say about your humanity?" he [Marty Black] asked.

This is coming from the guy who fired the city's blind receptionist, then had to scramble to find her replacement, finally settling for an unwillingly exiled police dispatcher after a union squabble caused his first choice for the job to get the boot? This is the same guy who screwed up these three people's lives with a great idea, right?

I'm truly failing to see how Black thinks he has the moral high ground here.

What was asked, Patten responded, was this: "What is Tacy's prognosis and can we get a clarification of the rules regarding such absences? Is Tacy expected to return to his full duties? If so, any idea when? One month? Three months? Six months? What I didn't ask for (was) Tacy's resignation.

Holy crap. An actual, bona fide, accurate statement, that one. The first one in Giles' article so far.

Tacy caught in the crossfire

On Friday Tacy confirmed he attended the Sertoma meeting. He plans to be at the next council budget meeting.

OK, so finally my original question, the one that started this whole mess, the one that I left at Marty Black's office, gets answered. This could have been avoided. You folks over at city hall ever heard of a phone? Email? Carrier pigeon?

As for the blog, "I haven't bothered to correct any of the misinformation. It just drags you into their world," Tacy said.

I didn't have any information, just a few unanswered questions, so answering those questions would somehow drag you "into their world?" What world, the public eye? Any time you don't want to be in the public eye, Rick, you actually can resign. As long as you still want to stay there, be prepared for some uncomfortable questions every now and then. If asking if you have any idea on when you might be returning to work is sucking you down into an amoral vortex, maybe it is time for early retirement.

In fairness to Tacy, he was placed in an unfair situation. It was city hall's job to inform the public right away that Tacy was ill and that he would be out for a specified or unspecified period of time. This was something that their propaganda minister, Pam Johnson, never got around to doing during the six weeks that Tacy had fallen off the public's radar screen. She had newsletters and stuff like that to do, so it's easy to see how she got distracted and never noticed that Tacy's seat on the dais was empty for six weeks. To quote comedienne Judy Tenuta, "Hey, it could happen."

Nevertheless, it was city hall's job to make a statement, not Tacy's, which is why I deliberately never asked Tacy. I still won't. If he wants to call me, that's different, but he's under no ethical obligation to do so.

Six weeks of silence and the Gondo never noticed either. The Gondo covers up the fact that they never noticed Tacy's absence by making their very first mention today in an attack piece on the only publication that did mention it. That's another nice bit of misdirection, almost as good as the one that Black put over on the Gondo.

Tacy's job was to get well. City hall's job was to keep the public informed. Same for the Gondo. Looks like Tacy was doing his part all along. As for the other two, they both failed miserably.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.