Thursday, December 17, 2009

Freedom Of Speech Under Fire in Charlotte!

Mecklenburg County commissioners Chair Jennifer Roberts said Wednesday that colleague Bill James should apologize for using a slur during an exchange with another board member, and said she may ask commissioners whether to take any further action.

The incident occurred Tuesday during a meeting in which a majority of commissioners agreed to offer domestic-partner benefits to county workers in same-sex relationships starting in 2011.

Toward the end of an emotional, two-hour debate on the topic, James leaned over to commissioner Vilma Leake and asked: "Your son was a homo, really?"

Leake responded: "You're going to make me hurt you. Don't do that to me. Don't talk about my son."

Leake had just finished speaking about her personal connection to the debate, including mentioning her son's 1993 death from AIDS. "To be insensitive to that is completely inappropriate," Roberts said Wednesday. "I think he does owe her an apology."

Man, it's getting so you can't say ANYTHING in this country without someone getting upset. Am I right, racist homophobes?

But James said he won't apologize, and said he was only asking Leake to clarify an earlier comment she made about her son's death and his lifestyle. He said he wasn't making a derogatory comment, and used a slang word used when he was growing up.
"People can believe whatever they want, they can believe in the tooth fairy and legend of Atlantis," James said. "I don't determine what I do based on what people think. I determine it based on what I did and what I did was I asked a question and that question doesn't deserve or require an apology."
Incidentally I have no idea whether James is a Democrat or a Teabagger, and it hardly matters. Point is, this Leake woman needs to take a chill pill. She THREATENED a guy for requesting information! That bitch has to go.

6 comments:

  1. Amusing that you claim not to know if James is a Republican. You know very well that he is. If he wasn't the extremist, whackjob website you found this on (Wankette, FireDogLake er wherever it was) would never have "reported" the story if it was two Democrats involved. Jennifer Roberts is a Democrat, Bill James is a Republican. So, come on, quit pretending you did know or don't care what the party affiliation involved was.

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  2. Nonetheless, my viewing of the original news story didn't identify his party affiliation. If I start reporting based on other peoples assumptions...

    ...hey, there might be some real Drudge money in this gig!

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  3. Ah, so it's the old "plausible deniability" game yer playin,' eh?

    So, you see the story on some fringe, leftist site. You don't "see" the party affiliation.

    Naturally you assume that it COULD be that BOTH were Democrats?

    Let's review... you first saw it on some wholly whacked out, lefty site... and you conclude they BOTH could be Democrats???

    Yeeeeeaaaaah, riiiiiiight.

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  4. So it would make you happier if I said he was a Republican whether I could verify it or not? I've got higher standards. It's not like I write captions for Fox News or somethin'.

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  5. Publius:

    Clearly Piker doesn't see things by Party affiliation. That's why he has a post up on my confrontation with Rep Wasserman-Schultz.

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  6. What's wrong with you people? Of COURSE I'M LIBERALLY BIASED. You should be grateful I'm not calling this guy Republican without knowing for sure, and you're attacking me for it.

    By the way, what confrontation? Did Ratigan say something that upset Drudge?

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