Audio By Carbonatix
Apologies to the civilians in the room. I need to speak directly to the bloodhounds at The Dallas Morning News. Please excuse us while we engage in a bit of canine shop talk, just among us ink-stained wretches.
Your managing editor, George Rodrigue, posted a rebuttal this afternoon to an item I wrote for Unfair Park a few days ago, about the way your paper handled the Trinity River toll road story.
Rodrigue called me a pig and then said he had to respond to me anyway, because “I’m getting the usual demands to defend our honor.” I will assume he is getting those demands from you guys at The News. Otherwise he would not have responded at all, because who talks to pigs? So I’m grateful. Stirring him up was the right thing and an indication that maybe you have a little more blood in your veins than I thought.
But we need to talk business here, people. And, if I may say so, you need to pay attention.
Your editor takes two statements I have made and uses them to sort of cancel each other out. I have said that Mayor Tom Leppert and city council member Mitchell Rasansky made a lot of political hay during the campaign of the fact that the city would never have to pay more than $84 million for the toll road, no matter how much the road costs.
Those of you who paid attention, you do remember that, right? That was the whole thing about, “Don’t let Angela Hunt send a billion dollars down the river” and so on. What a deal. No matter how much the road costs, we don’t have to pay more than $84 million.
Rodrigue toe-dances around an important related point: that Leppert said repeatedly in debates and interviews that he had received assurances from the North Texas Tollway Authority that the city would not be expected to pay more than its $84 million. That was the “I looked them in the eye” and “I am very comfortable” part.
But now Rodrigue takes another point I have made — that Leppert’s way of talking about these things is deliberately slippery — and says I have contradicted myself. If Leppert is slippery, then how can I say he made a promise? “So, which of Jim’s versions is one to believe?” Rodrigue asks.
Hey, hey. Talk about slippery stuff.
All right,
So I need to take back all of my positive remarks about Lindenberger’s reporting. If what Rodrigue says is true — he brought home the quote but was too stupid to know it was a story — then he’s a really bad reporter. A dumb reporter.
If he brought back the quote but sat on it because he knew it would get him in trouble with management — because management didn’t want stories in the paper that made the toll road look bad — then he’s a coward. In that case. he doesn’t deserve to call himself a reporter.
I think you guys see the truth here. And I bet you don’t think Lindenberger is stupid or a coward. Just weak. I will leave the rest of this important dialogue to you and your bathroom mirrors. –Jim Schutze
