Thursday, March 13, 2008

Muckraking

Now when Rush Limbaugh mentions the Drive By Media, I'll know what he's talking about.

The Bristol Courier has been aweful reporting the facts around the incident at UVA Wise.

What they describe as a "burning desire to kill his professor" amounts to just a few lines where the main character is considering it. Then he decides not to because "love transcends all transgressions, real or imagined." The last few pages deal with the character deciding to commit suicide. That's it. Period. No murder. In fact the line quoted as "And soon Mr. Christopher, there will be no life." is a reference to the character committing suicide as it occurs AFTER the character decides he can't kill the professor. The Courier has the essay and it's deliberatly quoted out of context.

And the character doesn't even do anything! Just think and write. How is the potentional death of one (fictional) person a "suicidal rampage" as their cohorts at the Media General News Service reported based on the phone interview I did with Mike Owens at the Courier.

Today, the paper is digging up dirt on me from highschool almost a decade ago! Yes, I wrote something for one of my English SOL's which was redflagged, and I had to do a quick interview with the school counselor (I think her name was Mrs. Scott). She determined I wasn't depressed or anything, and said (not in these exact words) that the interview was pro forma. The Courier should have mentioned I made a perfect score with that essay.

Yes, I got in trouble with the school in September. I was drunk and stumbled into someone else's room by mistake. I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't threaten anybody. I was arrested on the scene for public intox. It's the best thing to happen to me because that is what it took for me to finally get treatment. And let me add as an aside, that I'm not the first Iraq War vet to need treatment for alcoholism.

I was charged with other things from the incident (Felony trespassing with intent to commit assault and battery, assault and battery, and petty theft). On the first day at trial, the prosecutor motioned to dismiss those charges because the statement that the accuser made downtown at the police station the next day was nothing like the statement he gave campus police on the scene. What happend on February 29 was not an alcohol related incident, and is sheer muckraking trying to destroy the messenger.

I fight tooth and nail to get reporters to clarify that I've never been involuntarily committed, only TDO'd--and they just print that the commonwealth attorney claimed was "involuntarily committed" with air quotes that lack context explaining why that got the air quotes. Yes, the commonwealth attorney said that--but he got his information from the school (the false information I should add) NOT from my medical records.

And when the Kingsport Times does a very good job of making that distinction, I read in the Courier the next day that I'm a "criminal" and an alcoholic.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out the identity of the person at the opencarry.org discussion with the user name OutingBarber who claimed I was a gay rapist in reference to the alcohol incident I talked about above. That's absolute BS.

1 comment:

Steve Barber said...

You're a troll. That's slander. I'm deleting you.