There comes a time in life when one needs to stand up to the lies and the divisiveness that permeate through the community.  I have posted many times showing the lies, divisiveness, hate, anger, and jealousy published by Robert Slager. His most recent post, though, is upsetting on a number of levels.  He has distorted the truth behind Larry's efforts.  He has exploited the senior citizen population for his own gain.  He has blatantly tried to divide the community using our beloved seniors as nothing more than political pawns.  This type of political pandering cannot be allowed to stand, ESPECIALLY when it's wrapped in a blanket of claims of trying to bring the community together.

Yesterday, Mr. Slager sent a "dossier" to a group of people, presumably a list of his subscribers.  He also sent the "dossier" to members of this site.  There was no content in the email, not even a subject line.  He simply sent along his "dossier", and one can only assume he was hoping that the recipients would publish it on this site.  This would make sense, given that his pageviews are actually trending downwards this month and he previously tried to bait me into publishing some of his writing here.  Those individuals, however, saw through this scheme, and decided not to publish it.  I agree with this approach, but there are several items in the "dossier" that need to be refuted.  I just can't stand the thought of someone who gets all of their "news" from this source and being exposed to nothing but bias, hate, anger, and jealousy.

If we analyze the "dossier", we see that the first half is more or less a copy of his jeer, which we already discussed is based on a false premise.  When we look at the thread in question, we see that it was essentially started with two questions:

1.  Is it legal for a corporate endeavor to use a program such as Meals on Wheels to effectively subsidize its delivery cost to a specific segment of the population?
2.  If it is, how can we get the Standard Times and/or the Courier to do the same thing?

Now, let's look at some of the facts.  As of this writing, there are a total of 36 comments in the discussion.  One of those 36 - approximately 2.8% - had any substantive discussion of stopping the Observer delivery, and that one post was basically ignored by the rest of the people in the conversation.  The remainder of the thread was either a mockery of Slager or a conversation around how to get the other papers to contribute.  These are facts - SIMPLE facts - which Slager chooses to ignore.  Yes, there was a phone call, but the subject was not to stop the delivery of the Observer, it was to figure out how to get the S-T and/or Courier added.  These are all simple facts that could be easily verified, but doing so would be contrary to Slager's agenda, so why would he bother to do so?

Slager then continues to attempt to divide Wareham's citizenship by pitting one group (Take Back Wareham) against another (Senior Citizens).  The fact is that people here have legitimate concerns about people who get their news from The Wareham Observer.  Mr. Slager, of all people, should recognize the right of these people to have these concerns.  The view shared in this community is that Slager's bias, and his habit of presenting his opinions as fact is damaging to the citizens of Wareham.  (Note that Slager's bias has been factually documented in an analysis that I performed showing favorable and unfavorable coverage of the Selectmen as opposed to people who have opposed the Selectmen).  The view, which I share, is that giving any group of people The Wareham Observer as their sole source of news would result in a twisted view of the world, as well as slant the political process in the town of Wareham towards Slager's agenda, which people here agree is bad for the town, and bad for its citizens. 

The second half is riddled with lies, mistruths, and false assumptions.  Let's take these one at a time:

These people have called the office of Old Colony Elder Services to stop free delivery to home-bound seniors

This is false.  The phone call was placed to start free delivery of other papers to home-bound seniors.  The only reason to terribly misrepresent the situation like this is to attempt to build sympathy for his cause, at the expense of the seniors he's claiming to serve.

My God, we're talking about lonely senior citizens who have little connection to the outside world

Yes we are Mr. Slager, and that is EXACTLY why we are trying to help them see more of the outside world than your hate-filled rants can provide.

The Take Back Wareham animals would deny these people a free newspaper simply because I challenge their political viewpoints?

No, again, as has been stated repeately our goal is to present these people with a fair representation of the town's news.  Your "challenges" of our political viewpoints are so riddled with lies that it's unfair to the senior citizens who have no other source of information.  Your hate-filled rants, race-baiting, senior-bating, divisiveness, and overall lack of ethics are damaging to the community, and we care too much about our seniors to allow that to continue unchecked.

I implore each and every one of you to contact the new Move Wareham Forward organization...

We tried.  As of this writing, they haven't responded.  It appears that they're not as open as they claim to be.

Mr Slager, I call on you to retract this hate-filled and fact-free piece of shock-journalism.  There was never an effort to try to stop Meals on Wheels from delivering your paper.  At best, there were a couple of questions around the legality of it.  Nobody went any further than that.  Any claims to the contrary are 100% false, as can be verified by viewing the discussion in question.  I understand that you are in a tough financial position.  Despite your claims of newspaper sales, reports continue to come in about stacks of The Observer being available long after the publication date, and your pageviews are trending downwards this month.  You seem to have all of your eggs in this one basket, and it must be very stressful for you.  That's too bad, but continuing this strategy of shock journalism with terrible misrepresentation of the facts doesn't solve anything.  In the long term, people will see how liberally you stretch the truth, and how much of your content is massaged, misinterpreted, or completely made-up.  In the short term, you are harming the community you claim to love.  Most importantly, your use of the town's Cape Verdean, and now senior citizen populations as political pawns is a disgraceful act for which you should be ashamed of yourself.

Your policies and writings might help you to sell papers now, but they're hurting the citizens of Wareham, and we've had enough of it.  Please Mr. Slager, if you really care about this community as you claim to, retract the lies in this story, print a true version of it, and let's move on with the facts.  The divisiveness that you perpetrate has to stop.  This "dossier" of yours is the latest in a long string of divisive attacks.  Take for example when Mr. Brady reached out to Michael Schneider after Mr. Scheider's letter to the editor was published.  You painted it as an attack by Mr. Brady when in fact he reached out to try to find a common ground, and have a respectful conversation together.  When Steve Holmes emailed the anonymous individuals behind "Move Wareham Forward" to try to meet to discuss the issues, you said that he "demand(ed) a meeting...under (our) own rules and agenda."  This is simply not true - people here want to reach out to the community and help heal it.  We're doing all we can to bring this town together, but it's getting hard to do so when you continue to push people apart.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-11 to update URLs