It’s a paranoid world after all. Sept. 12, 2012

 

She’s decided to go after the mayor of neighboring town. Tom thinks it is because of her boyfriend, who has some kind of grudge to settle.

“He’s corrupt,” she announced matter-of-factly during our weekly staff meeting yesterday, something unheard of in our profession.

I wouldn’t have believed she said it if I wasn’t in the habit of audio recording these meetings and got to listen to it again.

Our boss claims she never heard her say it when I raised the issue after the meeting.

She didn’t stop there.

“Rumor has it, he (meaning the neighboring mayor) got a 16-year-old girl pregnant and has her stashed in an apartment with the housing authority.”

She said she would be meeting with the union representatives who have some kind of recall planned, confirming that they are in part source of some of her misinformation.

She seems to be repeating what she did with her own mayor’s opponent, looking for a way to humiliate the man.

While I can’t say whether the neighboring mayor is or is not corrupt, having her lay it out like this without proof shows she is either biased or naïve – or perhaps as Tom thinks, she is doing the bidding of someone else – which could be anybody from the police chief of her town to the mayor, or even her boyfriend RR, who has his own agenda.

I’m caught in a bad place in all this. Because of the history between me and her, I am biased as well. I can’t call her out without exposing myself and risking her retaliation.

Tom is probably right, thinking that she can no long ride her mayor’s gravy train and has found another train to ride, but at the cost of doing that person’s dirty work.

But she seems extremely angry at the neighboring mayor in a way that also seems personal, as if he somehow managed to offend her and she is looking for a way to get even.

When I spoke to him at the local diner, he seemed oblivious to her rage, although believes she has not treated him fairly. For some reason, he trusts me, but does not trust our boss, who he believes is out to get him. We all live in a very paranoid world after all.



email to Al Sullivan

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