I promised myself a while back that I would stop writing letters to my local newspaper, the Herald-Mail. I wrote a letter last year where I referred to the deceased Rev. Jerry Falwell as “an idiot”. My comment was edited by someone at the Herald-Mail to read that I called him “a fool”.
They made me sound like Mr. T.
I read something this morning that made me do a reversal on my self imposed no-letter to the editor policy. It was a heavy-handed piece of drivel pretending to be an editorial calling for, among other things, Cromer to write a check to the United Way (huh?) for claiming that a Hagerstown police officer was “lying” when he submitted a report stating that she asked him if he “knew who she was” when he stopped her for speeding.
I doubt they will publish my letter. If they do, I will make sure to link to it. If don’t publish it, I will post it here.
This isn’t the first time the Herald-Mail has editorialized about the Cromer traffic stop. On June 14th they published an editorial accusing Cromer of being too quick in accusing the police of a vendetta.
What they failed to mention was that it was the Herald-Mail — not Cromer — that came up with the word “‘vendetta’.
I read a post over on the Herald-Mail message board written by someone claiming to be a friend of Cromer’s. Among other things, this person claimed to have been with Cromer when she received the phone call from the Heard-Mail reporter asking about the incident. This person claimed that at no time did she hear Cromer use the word “vendetta” when talking with the reporter.
Huh?
Last week I emailed the reporter who wrote the story and asked him if Cromer said the word “vendetta”. I got a response almost immediately. He wrote:
I never quoted her directly as saying that. I asked her whether she felt some city officials and some members of the police department had a vendetta against her. She said, “Yes.”
So there you have it. The mystery is solved.
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2 Responses
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While I support both enities in my town, the county council and police force, why should we believe either side right off the bat? I believe all stories like this unravel eventually. I certainly think it is too early to be hailing one side the negative whole letting the other side off. This happens in many small towns across the country, old politics meeting new ways. The fact that so many claim to know or feel they are in the right makes me think I will check back next year and see the real story. This is typical, everyone knows the story and no one does.
It may be what I expected or completely different, but it will not matter in the scheme of things. Like many towns and cities I have resided in, it is too early to say one knows what happened or that one entity is being less manipulative than the other. I trust neither the councilwoman, the police, newspaper, and mostly I really distrust the still anonymous “friend” in the car.
It’s not really so much about who to believe or who not to believe, I just wonder what the motivation was with whoever leaked this story to the Herald-Mail. The incident happened three weeks before someone tipped off the newspaper.
It seems to me that the Herald-Mail should have known that they were being manipulated to some extent. Quite possibly by someone who drives a city take-home vehicle.
Take the use of the word “Vendetta”. It was the newspaper that brought up that word, not Kelly Cromer. Even when she answered in the affirmative to the word describing what she thought was taking place, it’s obvious that she was not referring to the initial traffic stop, but to the fact that the incident was leaked to the newspaper.
With gas costing more then 4 bucks a gallon, you would think that the citizens of Hagerstown would be praising Cromer for looking into the take-home vehicle program. It seems obvious that the program needs to be looked into. Because of the newspaper and whoever tipped them off, attention is being focused on Cromer for something she most likely didn’t even do. You have idiots calling the Mail Call voice mail demanding that she resign and you have the editorial section of the newspaper calling for Cromer to write a check to the United Way.
Its bizzaro world.