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An Apology to Brady Boucher |
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On January 13th, a posting was made by someone on the ittakesgrit.org's discussion/opinion forum. It was a totally inappropriate name-calling piece about Brady Boucher. As webmaster of the site, I issued an immediate warning to users of that forum and removed the offending posting. I almost immediately posted another message as follows: "This is an apology to Mr. Boucher for the posting titled, 'Shady Bunch Brady Bunch All the same Thing'. Name-calling and denigration of any individual is not the purpose of this opinion/discussion forum. Please know that I have been successful in removing the original posting due to its inappropriate nature. However, I have been trying -- unsuccessfully -- since then in removing all of the message "threads" -- the responses -- to that original posting. I am unfortunately having some type of technical or software problem, and am working with Yahoo! To determine what it may be so that I can remove all traces of the original message. Unfortunately, sometimes their "help" assistance is a bit slow. In the meantime, if there are any "computer gurus" out there who might be able to help me with this problem, I urge you to get in touch with us via email. Again, my sincerest apologies to Mr. Boucher. Regardless of whatever opinion I might have of anyone's politics or opinions, I would never approve nor condone this kind of public statement against someone."
The technical problems lasted about four days and caused me many hours of frustration and consumption of time away from my business or other, more productive, pursuits. This posting disgusted and offended me, as it did others, I am sure. I would urge that whomever authored it not come back, either to my discussion forum or my website. They are not welcome. The mentality of this type of person is the precise reason we became involved in city politics in the first place. Although I do not have the legal expertise to determine whether this type of posting might cross any lines in a legal arena, I certainly have enough personal knowledge of city politics and the Bouchers in particular (by their own actions), to feel that this posting clearly crossed over any lines of normally-accepted and civilized behavior among people of good will. While everyone has and is deserving of their opinions, this posting was more along the lines of an effort either to ridicule Brady, or make our discussion forum look bad because of its appearance. Either way, this type of behavior will NOT be condoned. Not on our website. It's contrary to everything we believe and stand for.
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