Triad City Beat editor chokes on his own vomit

GREENSBORO, NC -- Triad City Beat editor Brian Clarey writes the most disingenuous piece of editorial deception I've read in a long time. Taking on Greensboro city council representative Tony Wilkins' recent attempt to get the city to make public the top salaries of non-profits to which the city contributes, Clarey takes a central fact and turns it on its head so that he can proceed to cast undeserved aspersions on Wilkins and his constituents.

You may recall that the City of Greensboro, as part of lending $1.5 million to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (ICRCM), asked the museum to provide some information about its finances, including salaries. The city then proceeded, in the interest of public transparency, to make the information it gathered available on the web.

Wilkins used that interest of the city in gathering and making public the salaries of the employees of the ICRCM to try to convince his colleagues to do the same for OTHER non-profits the city funds. Far from targeting the ICRCM for special scrutiny, Wilkins was saying he wanted the same kind of scrutiny for all other city-funded non-profits. In fact, by using the ICRCM as a starting point, he drew into focus the differing treatment the ICRCM received from other non-profits, hardly the kind of hostility towards the ICRCM Clarey would try to pin on Wilkins.

The facts didn't get in Clarey's way though. Ignoring that Wilkins was using the city's treatment of the ICRCM as a starting place to argue for similar treatment of all city-funded nonprofits, Clarey pretended that Wilkins was motivated, not by fairness and equal treatment, but by—fantastically—animosity for the ICRCM and, having puked up that falsehood, Clarey proceeds to use it to discredit Wilkins, his constituents and conservatives in general. Clarey writes:

"The conservatives who make up Wilkins’ cohort have an almost pathological dislike for the ICRCM, which hits the trifecta of extreme right-wing hot buttons: It concerns civil rights, it gets taxpayer support and there are a whole lot of black people involved. If they were handing out birth control in there, one of these wingnuts might just burn it to the ground." 

Of course, Wilkins' attempts to get all non-profits to be treated by the city the same as the ICRCM was treated has nothing to do with dislike for the ICRCM, in fact, it would make no sense for dislike for the ICRCM to motivate Wilkins' to call for them to be treated equitably.

No, what Clarey did is vomit up his own prejudices then choked on them in righteous indignation. It was about as repugnant as watching a drunk throw up too, and just as enlightening.

Bonus: Clarey, at his former post as editor of Yes!Weekly, endorsed Wilkins in his run for council last fall:

"Wilkins represents all the things we like about conservative policy: fiscal responsibility, fair play, free markets. He’s big on transparency, and has shown an open mind and a zeal for finding out how things work since taking his seat. We endorse him with no reservations, save for the suggestion that he continue in this vein..."