Local Political Bloggers Dangerous? You Don't Say.

gorriti / Flickr / Creative Commons

The Associated Press put out an item to the national wires last Friday about the mayor of Salisbury, Maryland who took some time from his state-of-the-city address to carp about the bloggers and gadflies whose antics have placed their city "under siege":

Daily, I run into citizens who are weary of the 'gotcha' mentality on the part of a few citizens and City Council members...

This is simply mean-spirited constant intimidation. Combined with the lies and innuendos of several 'bloggers' this city is under siege.

"Gotcha"? "Mean-spirited"? "Intimidation"? "Lies"? This dude is using the same laundry-list of the terms you hear from elected officials in Orange Coutny -- probably anywhere, nowadays -- when they talk about their semi-web-savvy critics. As recounted in last week's Weekly, recall target and Mission Viejo Mayor Pro Tem went way further than this Maryland guy and said that he thought the blogging crowd might rise up and kill him at some point.

And at the council meeting two weeks ago, MacLean spent about ten minutes behind the dais defending himself after a member of the Saddleback Republican Assembly read from a resolution encouraging his resignation. "We have people that have gone out of their way to tell lies often enough that they actually think that makes it true," he said before addressing some of the charges against him. He left a few of the accusations unanswered, though, which of course brought more blog scorn.

He's not the only one of a like mind with this Maryland mayor. Some of the politicians around here give as good as they get. The recent best: CUSD ex-supe Woodrow Carter, who told his critics to "Get a life." Gotcha!