Well, I thought I was going to have a nice peaceful Sunday, free of lies, distortions, and bending of the truth.  Unfortunately, I woke up from my afternoon nap and checked to see if Slager had written anything.  Where oh where do I start with today's post.  It's almost like he read my commentary on his methods and tactics, and wanted to display them for all to see.  Let's roll through it one at a time, and see what he updates afterwards.  I'll break it down the same way he did to show the lies and misdirection that he employs.  Note that I retrieved the post about 3:05PM or so, so it might've changed.  Also, I'll make my usual request - constructive comments only in this thread.  Thanks!

Headline/introduction
Note that this post has the "In this Corner" picture of Slager, so presumably it is an Opinion piece.  However, in the very first sentence of the post, he says that he is going to use this post to "catch up on the whirlwind of news in Wareham" (emphasis added).  Right from the very beginning, he's blurring the line between news and advocacy, an ethical lapse that I discussed Friday in my post about Slager's ethics.

The Former Library Board of Trustees (and Board of Selectmen) Settlement
The header of this section illustrates both selective non-inclusion of facts (the fact that the BoS were involved in the settlement as well) and if you repeat it enough, it must be true (repetition of his view that it was just the Trustees that settled)

Well, they’ve accepted $40,000 from the town’s insurance police to cover a portion of their legal fees. That means they have conceded that they were, in fact, a public board. Otherwise they could not be insured by the town.

Slager implies that the $40k that the town's insurance company paid for the legal fees because the trustees fell under the coverage.  This is pure spin.  The town has an insurance policy that covers them in the case that they have to pay opposition's legal fees.  You know, like when you lose a case, and the court requires you to pay the victor's costs.  When he say "Otherwise the could not be insured by the town", he is essentially conceding the point that he doesn't want to allow - the trustees were not actually "insured by the town" - they were merely paid by the town's insurance policy.  Think of it this way - if Slager ran a red light and hit my car with his, totalling my car, who would pay my damages?  If you guessed "his insurance company, you would be right.  Now, if I accept the funds, does that mean that I was insured by his insurance?  Absolutely not - it means he screwed up, and his insurance company covered the costs of the foulup.  Hopefully everybody sees the parallels here.

...the former trustees did, in fact, admit in court that they lost $250,000 in bad investments

Well, the only named source from the situation says that they didn't.  Given Slager's shady ethical practices and history of bending the truth, who you believe?

why Bicki is speaking publicly on behalf of the former trustees when she was not a member of that board is not entirely clear; nor is the reason behind her refusal to contact the Observer directly

I'll let her respond if she so chooses, but I'm guessing she's speaking publicly to correct the glaring mistruths in his articles (and, in fairness, the errors in the S-T as well).  And why would she contact Slager directly when the message is clearly getting through from this forum?

The town insured the former trustees.

No they didn't.  See above.

That means all their financial records are public.

Absolutely not. See above.

Bicki can't seem to decide if there was a gag order or not regarding the settlement.

She seemed pretty clear in this post, which was made hours before Slager's latest Newspinion post made its way to the website:
"FACT: The judge never admonished any of the library representatives present in court on Monday not to speak about the case. We cannot comment on what the judge might have said to the selectmen."
Slager goes on to quote the S-T article where Bicki says "they all agreed to make little or no public comment".  The subject of this quote, though, is 'all of the library parties'.  He then quotes the same line I did from above about the judge not telling anybody to keep their mouths shut.  There is absolutely NOTHING contradictory in these sentences.  The library parties can have an agreeement on their own without the involvement of the judge.  Trying to make this look like she contradicted herself would be funny if it wasn't so sad.  And even if the parties involved agreed not to comment, if one of those parties anonymously made incorrect comments to a local website, I can't say that I wouldn't feel compelled to correct them as well.

(Savageau) was furious that the other side had defied the gag order and made comments to the Observer to that affect.

There was no gag order.  Slager admitted this no more than 5 sentences up in the same column with the Bicki quotes.  Usually I have to look at multiple posts (or multiple versions of the same post) to find examples of him contradicting himself, but he made it easy for me this time.

The spin and misinformation was to be expected.

Yes it was Rob, wasn't it.  I count nine seperate examples of spin and misinformation so far in this post.  Given my recent analyses, though, I suppose you're right - that is to be expected.

We suspect the missing $250,000 had a lot to do with that.

Couple of issues with this comment:  1. Again, this is based on an anonymous source and has been contradicted by a named source.  2. Even if it is true, saying the money is "missing" is very, very different from it being a lost investment.  "Missing" money, is stolen, skimmed, or just plain lost (as in "where'd it go", not "ooh, bad year for the market").  Slager's been a professional journalist for decades - he knows what the connotation of this choice of words are, and the only reason to use this wording is to add to the spin to try to make the trustees look bad.  But I suppose this was to be expected.

The Brady Meeting

They say the Observer was wrong when we called it a recall meeting.

You were.  I was at the meeting.  The only reference to the recall was when Brady said that he doesn't support one, doesn't want one, and doesn't want to run for office, but recognized that some people want one, and read a prepared statement from that other group, which he has nothing to do with.  Going by the timestamps on the Twitter feed of the meeting, the meeting started at 6:30 PM, the first recall reference was on the bottom of a "what's next" slide (after "planning for april election) at 7:40PM.  The next reference was when Brady read the above statement at 8:28PM.  Between these times, he covered civility & respect, excessive legal costs, the town planner, the charter review, Savageau telling people to sue the town, Slager's race baiting, committee appointments, media misrepresentation, the Coleman incident, town employee fear, Swifts Beach, and more.  But yeah, it was definitely a recall meeting. 

If this meeting had nothing to do with a recall, why was there an agenda item about the anonymous Wareham Recall 2009 group?

He said "I don't want a recall, I don't support a recall, but if you're interested in one, here's the people to talk to".  Rob, come on, you're really gonna stretch that to mean that it was a "recall" meeting?  Really?

Brady bent over backward to give those in attendance all the contact information necessary to reach the group, except, of course, naming the people actually behind the group.

If by "bent over backwards" you mean "read their email address", then yeah, he bent over backwards.  They asked to remain anonymous so that people like Slager leave them alone.  Can't imagine why they wouldn't want Slager attacking them every blog post he makes...

He also claimed that neither he nor the Citizens for a Better Wareham had anything to do with a recall effort.

Well, they don't. Why is this presented as a "claim" and not a fact? 

He didn’t address why the names of board members disappeared from the CBW web site a few weeks before the meeting

I don't know the answer to this, but I'm guessing they were sick of it being implied that they were some evil cabal hell-bent on destroying the town.  And they were probably sick of seeing non-sensical conculsions drawn from incorrect facts.  Again, I'm not a CBW member, but I wouldn't want to face Slager's rants either.

or why an advertisement for the meeting appeared on the Wareham Recall 2009 web site before that ad even appeared in the Courier or the Standard-Times.

I didn't see this, and to be honest, I don't believe him.  If this wasn't the 16th claim that he made that lacked full truthfulness in this same post, then maybe he'd have a little more credibility.  And Slager still hasn't answered the question about how John Donahue got a hold of the ad that the "Cape Verdean couple" put on his blog, and emailed that ad around to drum up a protest.  What's up with that?

Race-baiting and the boycott of the Observer
Slager knows that these are two completely separate issues, but he has put them together here for what I can only imagine is an attempt to gain some sympathy.  It's fairly transparent, but I can see why he would do it

Not a single person that I spoke with complained about the Observer allegedly “race-baiting” in its coverage of Brady’s meeting. In fact, nobody that wasn’t in attendance at Brady’s meeting has made any negative comments to us about quoting a Cape Verdean couple who believed Brady’s policy of not allowing people who agreed with selectmen into his “community meeting” amounted to discrimination against Cape Verdeans.

See my previous comments about sampling bias.  This comment is completely irrelevant.

This is, quite clearly, an attempt by Brady’s supporters to manufacture an issue in their attempt to put the Observer out of business.

No, it's an expression of anger and frustration that someone who claims to have a respectable publication would stoop to these tactics, and involve the town moderator in an attempt to generate a protest before a community meeting.

Not only have they been harassing and intimidating our distributors,

You mean "harassing" like posting their phone number online and encouraging people to call them and misrepresent what the first amendment actually says?  That kind of harassing?  Or do you mean like going there and informing them that they would choose to purchase other goods from merchants who don't carry a product that they find to be harmful?  Slager's using the repitition here to try to convince people that the OVM was "harassed" when all signs point to them making an intelligent decision absent any "harassment" or "intimidation".

The recall crew wants the Observer out of business because they see our reporting as an impediment to their agenda.

I thought it was the Brady bunch?  Or the CBW?  Which one is it?  Contrary to what Slager says, these groups are not all the same.  Shockingly (sarcasm) there are multiple groups in town unhappy with the current leadership and willing to take action about it.  Slager refuses to acknowledge this, instead misrepresenting everybody looking for better leadership as one evil group.  That's just not right.

They don’t want Freedom of Speech in Wareham.

FOR THE LAST TIME, freedom of speech is freedom from governmental information in the process of free speech.  Sort of like when the town administrator says that no town employes can talk to the press without going through him.  Wait, that happened?  Oh....

the majority of local residents are seeing the desperation in the recall crew’s tactics

This, plain and simple, is pulled from his @$$.  He's repeating the "name game" tactic again, and citing some pretend poll that he must have to get this information.  Bunch of crap, and he knows it.

Paul Shooter

It’s become almost comical how much time the bloggers are spending trying to discredit our new correspondent.

It seems to me like nobody's tryingo "discredit" "Paul" any more - at this point, it's mostly mockery.  Jello shooter, south park pictures, etc.  This board is having fun with it at this point.  Won't stop Rob-boy from trying to get some sympathy out of the situation, though.  The question that he still hasn't answered, though, is how he justifies adding "Paul Shooter" to the byline of alread-written articles that are quite obviously written in a different tone and style than "Paul's" editorial.  It seems obvious that Slager wrote these articles, quoting himself, and then slapped another name on it later when he got called out on it.

Given the way the bloggers have gone after his alter-ego already, it really isn’t difficult to understand why he won’t use his real name.

Ever stop to think that, maybe if he used his real name, none of this would've happened?  Nobody's going after him, they're going after the ridiculousness of the name.  Another attempt to gain sympathy for something that's really his fault.

On the fake Observer web site the infamous IHATESLAGER finally admitted...

Really, you're going to use an admission from a guy named IHATESLAGER who types in all caps and (all due respect, Mr. IHATE) seems more than a little bit "off" in most of his posts?  Really? That's what you're going with? This guy is angry, yeah, but not someone I'd call a realiable source from the powerelitecbwrecallcrewbradybunch.

So why did (Winslow) write there was a traitor in our midst?

She was obviously referring to the warehamobserver.com community.  Remember, "Shooter" said "I have posted some things on the other Observer site."  Shooter never claimed to be in the CBW, neither did Cara.  This is another example of Slager making up connections that don't exist to try to further his agenda.  Either he has absolute no ability to figure out how to make A plus B equal C, or he's doing this on purpose to try distort the story to serve his own purpose.  Which one is it Slager?

It sound to me like she considers herself aligned with the CBW now.

(a) "It sounds", not "It sound"
(b) It sounds that way because you're making stuff up.  Plain and simple.

I've lost track of the number of ways that he stretched the truth, or just plain lied, in this post.  I hope that some of his readers made it all of the way through this post, though, because once everybody sees his tactics for what they are, the town as a whole will be much better off.

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