Andy MacDonald over at (un)SoundPolitics doesn’t like Seattle Monorail Board chairwoman Kristina Hill’s choice of words:
She then proceeds to give a profanity-laced interview, using the s-word three times and variations on the f-word no less than six. This is the behavior of the person the monorail board has chosen as their leader.
I can understand that Hill is angry after losing a battle she has fought for several years. But an employee of a public agency should not be cursing in interviews to the press, especially not the head of an agency. Civil servants — in which I include elected and appointed officials — should always strive to be exactly that: civil. A lowered standard of civility in public discourse has a corrosive effect on democracy.
What a fucking load of shit. This was The Stranger she was talking to, for Christ’s sake, a publication whose writers long ago traded in their stodgy, old Roget’s for a dog-eared copy of Glenngary Glen Ross. Hill gives an honest, in-depth, 3000-word interview, and we should just dismisses the entire thing, because she uses the “f-word”…? What the fuck?
I betcha Andy still refers to his penis as his “pee-pee.”
As my regular readers know, I occasionally exercise some of the more colorful features of the English language, and so I’ve grown accustomed to critics flinging that “civil discourse” crap my way like so much monkey shit. But it’s especially galling coming from the folk over at (u)SP. I suppose calling Ron Sims “the Robert Mugabe of Washington politics” raises the standard of civility in public discourse, huh? And relentlessly accusing King County Elections of fraud and corruption, without providing a single scrap of evidence… that doesn’t have a corrosive effect on democracy, does it?
Personally, I’ll take a shitload of “fucks” over (u)SP’s politely phrased lies, any day of the week.