Sheriff Morgan is butt of his own joke Escambia Sheriff David Morgan made the cover of online magazine Slate. And not in a good way. Slate’s legal writer, Dahlia Lithwick, posted a piece this week that is spiraling through cyberspace as I type about Morgan’s speech at the Rotary Club of Pensacola — including the exceedingly inappropriate “turd joke.” Once again a truism of the 21st century eludes our public officials. Your audience is never just the folks in the room with you. Your audience is everywhere. What you say to the downtown business lunch crowd on Tuesday, you ought to be prepared to say to the Baptist preachers on the west side on Thursday. And to the world by the end of the week. Now the conversation is about more than the shooting of Roy Middleton, a 60-year-old black man on disability who was shot in the driveway of his Warrington home. And it is about more than an incident at the Warrington home of Cristina Moses and Travis Nicholas, when deputies entered their home without a warrant searching for a suspect and shot the couple’s two dogs, killing one. Now it is about the businesswoman or college graduate looking for a job who starts doing a little internet research on Escambia County and finds Slate’s “A Florida Sheriff’s Bizarre Defense of His Force’s Abusive Police Conduct” headline. That searcher will hear a sheriff’s stunningly tone-deaf take on the issues of race and class when talking about two incidents that have raised concerns about his department’s use of force. That searcher will hear a sheriff shift the focus and blame the media for injecting race into the conversation, then play the race card himself, questioning where the outrage is when black folks are the perpetrators of crimes against white folks or other black folks. Who wouldn’t want to move here after reading that? I mean, why live where the discussion of serious civic issues rises above the level of blaming “outsider agitators” and cracking potty jokes? What ambitious, educated, enterprising young professional or millennial — generations who prize multiculturalism and tolerance above all — wouldn’t want to come here and raise a family or start a business? Pensacola has made progress promoting an image beyond the “Redneck Riveria” moniker we have born for years, touting our low cost of living, abundant natural beauty and family-friendly atmosphere. Morgan’s joke may have gotten a laugh from the hometown crowd in the room with him, but among the young professionals we claim to be so desperate to retain and attract, he made us the punch line.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 00:22:07 +0000
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