Hey folks, for the sake of transparency, here is the rest of the conversation with Mr. Slager.  I know people want to keep focus on the issues at hand, but I really feel it's important to show this process as transparently as possible. 

His reply from late last night:

from    Slager
to    Me
date    Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 11:48 PM
subject    Re: Extending an olive branch
mailed-by    aol.com
   
hide details 11:48 PM (16 hours ago)
   
   I will respond to your e-mail with a very simple offer. I will not debate an anonymous blogger. I have made that clear. I will not debate with somebody who finds it ethical to edit my replies and post them on a web site I refuse to join. If you do not understand why your tactics lack morality I have neither the time nor inclination to explain it to you.
   PShooter and I did begin a dialogue earlier today because he had the courage to use his real name (which I already knew). I sent him a subsequent e-mail earlier this evening offering an opportunity to continue our discussions despite the terrible thing the bloggers did today. I hope he takes me up on that offer. I informed him that a comment I made on the Courier web site was published prior to a second e-mail he sent me that offered his regrets regarding the decision to prevent free newspapers from being delivered to Meals on Wheels clients. The Courier does not offer the opportunity to delete posts after they are published. If that option was available to me, I believe I would have taken it.
   So here is my offer to you, and it is the best you will get. If you are willing to sign up on the Observer Media web site using your real name I will give you two years of free access. Then you can debate me as often as I am available, providing, of course, you follow the terms of service that disallows personal attacks.
  I will not engage you elsewhere. I have seen first hand how my comments can be manipulated. That's the best I'm willing to do. I have always been willing to be held accountable for what I write. You have not been. So unless you are willing to step up to the plate I will no longer converse with you.

Robert Slager

My response from a few moments ago:

Mr. Slager,

You continue to make accusations about my ethics without providing any evidence.  Are you ever going to share the "number of occasions" where I have "taken e-mails that [you] have sent to [me], edited them to completely disort the meaning of what [you] wrote, and used that distortion to attack [your] credibility with others" (quote taken from your post on the Courier's site last night)?  Or are you going to continue to just throw the accusation out there with no supporting evidence?  To use one of the phrases you drill home frequently, that would seem to be about your speed.  I agree that such tactics would "lack morality" (to use your term), but I have not partaken in such a practice, and it's offensive to me for you to suggest otherwise.

As for the anonymity, there's a significant difference between us that you have failed to recognize - sensational and controversial political editorials tied to your name are a good thing for you.  This sells papers and drives pageviews.  For example, the most sensational/riveting/pick-you-adjective set of stories you wrote this month were the pieces on the tragic death of Scott Monteiro (which, I'll say, were very well-written).  I'd be willing to bet that the days those stories were available on your website had the most visitors of the entire month, and without it you would have shown flat growth in visits, if not a decline.  On my end, though, there's no gain with associating my name to my writings for me, or for the town.  You would simply attack me because of who I am (as you've done to my family in the past).  Instead of my resume and linkedin profile showing up first when a prospective employer searches for me, they would possibly find your attacks which, based on your track record, would have little to do with the facts at hand.  Do you not find it hypocritical that you allow "Paul Shooter" to make the comments he does under the cloak of anonymity, but you will not allow me to do so?  Is that because we disagree on the issues?  Perhaps you can just refer to me as "Pete Bomber" and we can move on with this.

As I said, there's also no benefit for the town for me to reveal my name. Facts are facts, and that's what I'm interested in.  The truth has no bearing on what my name is.  You'll accuse me of lying and being unethical but the beauty of the independent website is that we can put the entire conversation out there for all to see, and let the people be the judge of that.  I understand from reading your website that you have diabetes - if we get enough traffic on the site, I'd even be willing to set up a system of ads, and donate any and all earnings from the ads to the diabetes research fund of your choice.  Heck, pick any non-political charity and I'll do that.

I don't want to debate you, and my email was not a challenge to do so.  I thought I made that as clear as possible in my original note.  However, just to make sure it's crystal clear at this point, I'll repeat it.  I. do. not. want. to. debate. you.  You've already shown that such an attempt would be met by you playing a game that I'm not interested in playing (when you wouldn't answer 5 simple questions before I posted your "response" a few weeks ago).  What I do want is for the people of Wareham to have an opportunity to read the truth without having to pay for the privelege of reading our conversations.  I do want us to be able to have reasonable conversations in which questions are answered, and not dodged.  These are a variety of ways that we can do this, but posting in a forum that you moderate that is only available to paid subscribers to your site, and would increase pageviews (simply from my posts, if nothing else) thus helping you financially....well, that's not one of the ways.  I'm also not interested in partaking in a discussion with you where my every comment would be moderated by you before it gets posted.  There's no independence or openness at all in what you've proposed, and you must have known that before making the proposal.

If you're interested in a truly open dialogue designed to strip away the fluff around the issues and get to the facts, then I'm all for it.  I will again offer to set up an independent website with no ties to either www.thewarehamobserver.com or www.warehamobserver.com upon which the conversation can take place.  If you're not interested in a truly public, transparent, mature conversation, I would simply ask you to be more responsible in your writing and stop making accusations that you can't, or won't, back up.  I wish you good health in the future.

Finally, please note from the CC: line below that I will be posting this email on www.warehamobserver.com.  The email will be copied in its entirety, with the only changes being removal of the email addresses and cleanup of formatting that doesn't translate well from gmail to bbcode.  This is the same thing I have done to every email that I have posted there, no matter your claims to the contrary (which, again, I'll note you have never been able to back up with examples).

Kind regards,
-Cas

cc: www.warehamobserver.com