GREENSBORO, NC -- Allen Johnson, opinion editor of the News & Record, is at it again: wagging his scolding finger at the bad manners of a citizen speaker at city council meetings while giving cover to a council unable to tackle hard problems. It's so typical and so tired: this practice so well honed here in Greensboro—and the N&R is a master at it—back of a hand to the head, swooning with the vapors, incensed at some perceived violation of polite manners as an excuse to avoid the inconvenient hard truths about the status quo.
Former Greensboro Police Captain Charles Cherry has been a regular speaker from the floor at Greensboro council meetings for about a year. A few weeks ago he insulted Mayor Robbie Perkins by saying that Perkins' daughter deserved a better father. Instead of taking a real look at the issues Cherry has been hammering on for months, Johnson uses the occasion of Cherry's frustration boiling over to jump on Cherry for not remaining polite in the face of months of council's inaction. Johnson even goes so far as to equate ignoring perturbed speakers with "doing a good job."
Johnson runs interference for an inept council by taking aim at Cherry's coarseness by concealing and ignoring some important facts:
- Charles Cherry had been asking for months what is the procedure for investigating allegations of misconduct by the city manager. There wasn't one. Finally, the city manager came up with one: compaints would go to council. Cherry did just that: filed a complaint with council. To date, council has not given any public indication of whether or not it undertook an investigation of Cherry's complaints against the city manager, much less any finding of the validity of Cherry's accusations. But, for the N&R's Johnson, that is not important, the manifestations of Cherry's frustration are what he'd rather us focus on.
- Johnson's description of Cherry talking "repeatedly about oral sex," is intentionally deceptive. The important detail Johnson keeps from his sheep, I mean, readers, is that Cherry was describing the on-duty misconduct of police personnel. That is a huge difference. Is the speaker just "talking about oral sex," as the dissembling Johnson would have you believe or is he talking about police engaging in oral sex while on duty? Again, Johnson would rather ignore the trouble and focus on the messenger. A writer who creates such a gross distortion is not to be trusted.
- Cherry's attack on the mayor, by referencing the mayor's child, was mean... and not unprecedented. The mayor himself, at a council meeting in April of last year, attempted to shame a civic activist by saying, from the dais, "Please don't do this to your children" (Here, at the 1:01:00 mark) There was one huge difference between Cherry's comments and Perkins', however: Perkins made his comments in the presence of the speaker's children. The mayor's comments even made the speaker's daughter cry, as can be seen on the video at the 1:02:40 mark as a friend escorts the children from the chambers.
From Johnson's perspective, a citizen long-ignored and outside the bounds of power goes "too far" when he says the mayor is a bad parent but, even though Johnson wrote about the other meeting where the mayor's conduct deserved the same condemnation,* Johnson had nothing to say about the mayor, during a live meeting, with microphone on and cameras rolling, attempting to embarrass a citizen in front of, and by referencing, his children.
Hypocrite, I believe, applies; both to Johnson's selective outrage and to the Mayor who found Cherry's conduct "disgusting" but never apologized or expressed regret for his similar, if not worse, conduct.
- The mayor was not, as Johnson writes, "defending his children." Cherry did not attack the mayor's child. Cherry insinuated that Perkins was a bad father. He said Perkins daughter (he named her) "deserves a better father." This in the context of the mayor having been recently sued for back child support. Johnson deflects that criticism though and recast it as a contemptible, but untrue, attack on the mayor's child.
- What Johnson describes as Cherry "getting into it" with Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson also looks a lot different when the facts are applied. Cherry has taken to asking Yvonne Johnson if all of the police officers, all black, in the infamous "black book" were on duty at the time of the alleged offense for which the black book was created—a fact crucial to the legitimacy of the line-up book as a proper investigative tool. Yvonne Johnson was mayor then. She saw the black book in a closed council session. It's a good question. she should answer it.
This is precisely the kind of clear and concise question Allen Johnson says speakers should ask.Yet, he ignores months upon months of council inaction on Cherry's issues and only pipes up when things get testy—and then only to misassign blame to a possible victim of city employee misconduct.
[That Johnson would steer clear of the black book question is unsurprising. He has buried his head in the sand on the issue. Although he once insisted in a published editorial that we must get to the bottom of the black book,* when the facts surrounding the black book started to reveal themselves to be in contradiction to the false narrative constructed by his paper, Johnson's oh so sincere concern for the truth disappeared and he never wrote another word about it.]
As his screed on Cherry demonstrates, when it suits him Johnson is perfectly willing to intentionally deceive his readers. He got the central facts wrong on the matter of prayer before Rockingham County School Board meetings, then quietly changed his writings with no acknowledgement or apology. He also, laughably, blamed would-be performing arts center supporters for misleading the public about their fundraising while completely ignoring his own complicity* in spreading the lies. Sometimes, he just makes things up out of thin air.
So when Johnson posits that an "obvious solution" to the Charles Cherry problem is "to ban him from the Melvin Municipal Office Building during City Council meetings," that's the conclusion of a mind avoiding the facts. It not only lets council off the hook for their inability to handle tough questions, it is a dangerous proposition from a newspaper in a democracy.
"Well, I declare, I never..." is the Southerner's way of avoiding a question and the N&R deploys it with mastery: Take offense at the tone of the question as an excuse to avoid answering the question. This city is never going to be better than the backwater of mediocrity it is as long as those with influence over public opinion deploy their mock indignation to marginalize those who dare speak truth to power.
There is a lot that is wrong with Greensboro. It is not a place where the genuine thrives. It is a place where the protection of power cliques is more important than excellence and truth; where fakery and misdirection rule; where incompetents and cheats have each others' backs; where "bad manners" are an excuse to avoid hard questions—and the News & Record, news and editorial, are instrumental in protecting and fertilizing this insidious way of life.
Charles Cherry was rude and shocking. He has become impatient. He is a symptom, though—a symptom of city leadership that is too timid, too insecure, too incompetent or just too unconcerned to take on troublesome complaints. That's the real lesson of Charles Cherry, his bad manners are a but a sideshow.
* Not available online since the N&R has three times obliterated their archives in the past five years.
POST SCRIPT:
Another thing an inquisitive writer might question, if he was not just carrying water for the status quo, is why was Cherry steered by a police officer through the council chambers as he tried to leave the speakers podium? Cherry, like at least one other speaker that night, had made his way to the speaker's podium by crossing the chambers in front of the council dais. When he was finished, he attempted to leave the way he came. He was met midway by a Greensboro police officer. The reason for that is not clear. What followed is even less understandable. Instead of escorting Cherry back to his seat or to the exit, the officer steered Cherry up the central isle of the chambers, through the seats and towards the back of the room where there is no exit.
"Where am I going?" Cherry asked repeatedly. At one point, the officer backed Cherry into an umbrella on the floor, causing Cherry to trip and stumble. From there, the officer continued to escort Cherry on the now circuitous route to the exit, with Cherry loudly asking, "What have I done?"
Why was Cherry intercepted by a police officer when leaving the podium? Why was he steered closer to the city manager he had just criticized, into the heart of the assembled crowd and away from his seat and the exits? Was the officer trying to provoke Cherry into an altercation?
These are the questions the News & Record should be asking instead of the tsk, tsk tsk it aims at Cherry.
