The reaction from Henry County officials to the Will Vehrs kerfuffle is ridiculous. The Martinsville Bulletin, doing all that they can to help create a scandal here, reports on the comments from elected officials:
“Shame on him,” said State Senator Roscoe Reynolds, D-Ridgeway, of caption entries posted on a blog by Will Vehrs, a state Department of Business Assistance employee.
Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Collinsville, urges Gov. Tim Kaine “to call for Mr. Vehrs’ resignation, effective immediately” in a letter dated May 4.
[…]
Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville, also did not see the humor in Vehrs’ comments.
“It’s just absurd. If he’s in economic development, he’s in the wrong job,” Marshall said. “The other thing that bothers me is, was this on our (taxpayers’) time?”
However, the bottom line is, “the folks in Martinsville and Henry County don’t need this,” Marshall said.
Del. Armstrong’s reaction, in particular, is completely over the top. If Del. Armstrong were discovered to have made a joke at Martinsville’s expense (and I’ll hazard a guess that he has), should the governor call for his resignation?
Mark Heath, President of the Martinsville-Henry Count Economic Development Corp., probably comes across as the rudest with this comment:
Heath bristled at Vehrs’ apology, which was posted Tuesday afternoon after Vehrs was contacted by the Bulletin.
“I could care less about the apology. I don’t see how that helps,” Heath said.
The only guy who comes across as sane is a Board of Supervisors member:
Andy Parker of the Reed Creek District had a slightly different take.
“I think people are making a bigger deal about it than necessary,” Parker said. However, “clearly, this guy has too much time on his hands.”
Parker also saw the humor in Vehrs’ comments.
“While it might be in poor taste for some, some of it was pretty funny,” Parker said. “I certainly didn’t take offense.”
I’ve read a lot of comments about this on blogs in the past couple of days, and there has been one constant: every single person (from Henry County or otherwise) has recognized that they’re just jokes, nobody was hurt, and that Martinsville officials are making themselves look like humorless blowhards.
One of my pet peeves is people who take humor out of context in order to get all uppity about it. Democrats were particularly egregious offenders in the bad old days of “political correctness,” though Republican leaders have been working hard to claim the mantle in the past few years. Perhaps it’s breaking out of its partisan constraints and into a geographic niche: Henry County.
in the bad old days of “political correctness”
Waldo! Did I miss something? Is political correctness a thing of the past?
Lord know — I wish. But it surely seemed to spike sometime while I was a kid, maybe in the early or mid 90s? I remember it became sufficiently prevalent that it became a recurring theme in Seinfeld.
If my memory serves me well, didn’t Delegate Armstrong make some “inappropriate” jokes at the Genrral Assembly he had to apologize for? Yes, apologize, not resign.
What was that saying about glass houses? Hypocrite
Has anyone mentioned that the Martinsville Bulletin is not a corporate paper? Or that it’s owned by the Haskell Family? The paper lists Robert H. Haskell as its publisher.
http://www.activistcash.com/biography.cfm/bid/932 says that Robert H. Haskell is Executive Vice President of the Bulletin. It also says that he is the Vice Chairman of Public Welfare Foundation. It continues to say that the foundation has assets in excess of $370,000,000.00. The section on grants makes for interesting reading….nothing on grants for Martinsville but they did give some to Greenpeace.
Here is that site http://www.publicwelfare.org/index.asp
I have NO idea why they would sic their dogs on a kind, good natured blogger like Will. Or if they make campaign contributions….
It made today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch [http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1137835949403&path=%21news&s=1045855934842].