Hartzman's mean potshots

GREENSBORO, NC -- Local blogger, Yes!Weekly contributor and former mayoral candidate George Hartzman is a prolific writer. Line after line, paragraph after paragraph, post after post of what appear to be meaningful data and information, often seeming to explain some dire accusation of wrong-doing or malfeasance.

It's all really just so much camouflage, though — textual cover for the unfair and mean-spirited potshots Hartzman launches from behind his deliberately constructed blind of inexactness and misdirection. As local blogger Jeff Martin has rightly said, it's McCarthyism; only the targets are not Communists, but rather anybody simply unlucky enough to find themselves in Hartzman's cross-eyed cross hairs.

Here's how it works. Hartzman beings with some unflattering innuendo or incriminating accusation. Then he sets about creating an illusion that his attacks are founded in reason and supported by facts when, in reality, they are built on rhetorical slights of hand and intentional confusion. Here are some of his common techniques:

Interpretive Grammar : The basics matter. Subject, verb, object. Punctuation. Who did what to whom? The basics are requisite for a reasonable evaluation of the soundness of an assertion. Hartzman will often avoid grammatical precision precisely where it is needed the most, where his attacks meet the facts, in order to slither away from accountability. It is enough for Hartzman that it sounds like he could be saying what you think he might be saying. Clarity, however, means accountability, and that is to be avoided.  

Hartzman Example: "I believe Yvonne voted to enrich Skip Alston and Earl Jones, who she has a financial interest via the Simkins Pac, and Skip and Earl stand to profit from the museum after the debt is paid off via the City of Greensboro's bailout, which Yvonne voted for;"

The Mirage: Instead of a statement of fact, he paints an accusation as an appearance. He often deploys this technique with the words "looks like," — an illusion; an unsubstantiated impression as solid as any fact.

Hartzman Example: "Zack Matheny doing what Roy Carroll told him to on economic incentives after what looks like selling taxpayer money to fund his Congressional campaign?" 

The Ghost: To professionals, this is known as the passive voice, a sentence with no subject, where something happens on its own, unattributed to any earthly actor. "The economic benefits were estimated at $12 million," or "Pollution was released into the river," are examples. Who made the estimate? Who released the pollution? A ghost. This is a journalistic no-no for a reason: It's sneaky. It's a linguistic magic trick;  a misdirection. Without knowing to whom we can  attribute the action we cannot evaluate motives or expertise or know where to look for verification or responsibility. Nobody is accountable. With the passive voice, actions are made by invisible ghosts. Hartzman is fond of ghosts.

Hartzman Example: "City staff and council were informed before the vote that some money the museum was to receive did not look like it was merely meant to pay off loans tied to saving the facility..." [This is actually a two-for-one: the passive voice (who informed?) and another "looks like."]

Befuddle: Like Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs Bunny, Hartzman's readers will find themselves just as befuddled wondering "Which way did he go?" when confronted with Hartzman's intentionally confusing formatting. His inconsistent use of quotations marks, sprinkled with ellipses and a mix of right and left justified paragraphs leave one wondering if one is reading Hartzman's words or something written by someone else. The jumbled mess may make sense to Hartzman, but it's cryptic to the rest of us, which is is part and parcel of Hartzmans intentional obfuscation. The harder for us to follow, the better. No need for full comprehension, he'd rather we just get the gist of his innuendo.

Hartzman Example: Here's a good one.

The Sesame Street Game: Do you remember "One of these things doesn't belong here," the Sesame Street song challenging children to identify a thing that did not belong with the others? It is a good song to keep in your head when reading Hartzman, as you will find him slipping in unrelated items to his lists of particulars to bulk up an assertion light on facts. Here he is explaining how former Mayor Robbie Perkins worked to "enrich" Skip Alston:

Harztman Example: "Robbie Perkins, reported to have personally identified and advocated for Mujeeb Shah-Khan to be hired as Greensboro’s City Attorney, was an honorary Chair of the ICRCM/Simkins 2013 golf tournament. Perkins advocated for the museum bailout, employed Alston’s former campaign manager, voted for what appears to have been an unnecessary police settlement, a television show and Skip Alston’s $150,000 commission via the Bessemer Shopping Center deal." 

Can you guess which does not belong? Here's a hint, they all relate to Skip Alston, however tangentially, except for one — unless Hartzman was just associating it with Alston because it also involved black people. (Answer below.)

The Link Dump: Make a post seem well researched and substantiated with a bunch of links to seemingly supporting sources. Hartzman offers no explanation of why the links matter. Click through and one becomes bewildered as to their relevance but, to the uninitiated, the pile of links looks like solid substantiation.

Hartzman Example: This one will do.

Channel Rube Goldberg: Like the convoluted Rube Golderg contraptions where mechanical events cascade crazily from one to another ultimately to perform some incredibly simple task, Hartzman will send his readers down a chute of incomprehensible logorrhoea  instead of just  being concise and clear. Why? Because to be direct and concise would rob Hartzman of the opportunity to deploy his deplorable rhetorical techniques. There is no room for grammatical obfuscation, mirages, ghosts and irrelevancies in directness.

Example at the end of this post.

All of this would not matter if Hartzman were just amusing himself, but Hartzman deploys these techniques in unscrupulous attacks on people. It's malice in a thin disguise.

Sure, many of Hartzman's targets are public officials (but not always) and they are vulnerable to the slings and arrows of any opinion, but that doesn't make what Hartzman does any less malicious. In fact, under the guise of, as he says about himself, wanting to "leave others better off for his having existed," his practices are especially insidious. To the extent they enter the public discourse (and thanks to Yes!Weekly, that is more frequent now) they impede, convolute and distract. They foment fear, mistrust and inspire suspicion. Yes, once in a while, he digs up some nugget of importance, but far too often he is the wolf who cried boy. He's not leaving others better off. He's tearing us down with his malevolent snarling.

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Answer to the Sesame Street Game: The police settlement. It had nothing to do with Skip Alston. (The television show may also be an acceptable answer. I thought I remembered an association between it and one of Alston's children, but I cannot find anything on the web to substantiate that memory.) Bonus points if you also noticed that the example included a mirage: " voted for what appears to have been..."

Channel Rube Goldberg example: Hartzman writes this as an "explanation" for his claim that Greensboro City Council representative Yvonne Johnson has a financial conflict of interest in the International Civil Rights Center and Museum:

My understanding is if the property pays off the tax credits and debt with the bailout money, the for profit entities go away and the owners of the Sit in Movement non profit own the property, and the exhibits, and won't have property tax obligations.

If the project goes cash flow positive, Skip and Earl can start taking salaries.

The non-profit could sell the property.

The non-profit could become a for profit.

It will be theirs to do what they want with it, after mismanaging the museum.

City Council will have bailed out members of the Simkins PAC, and the Simkins PAC helped put some of the Council in their seats.

Yvonne is in the Simkins PAC. Skip is the Treasurer of the PAC.

Both look like have paid family members from the PAC's assets.

If money changed hands to their kin while the PAC was under their control, Yvonne and Skip have a financial interest in each other.

Yvonne untied herself to the museum to advocate and vote for the museum bailout, which could enrich Skip.

Yvonne was endorsed by the Simkins PAC, whose Treasurer is Skip.

Skip stands to benefit from the museum via Yvonne's actions.

Yvonne stands to benefit from Skip's actions via the Simpkins PAC.

It's a conflict of interest.

According to the city charter, the vote/contract should be nullified by a Council vote.